Subculture  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Revision as of 22:50, 22 July 2007; view current revision
←Older revision | Newer revision→
Jump to: navigation, search

Related e

Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Shop


Featured:

"The relationship between mainstream, "hegemonic" culture and the subcultures that split off from it mirrors the relationship of a linear, dominant narrative strain to the skein of other paths that could be pursued by the reader of hypertext. In other words, the way power is distributed in society relates to the way meaning is distributed in a hypertext narrative. In Subculture, The Meaning of Style, Dick Hebdige describes hegemony and the battle for subcultural meaning that resides beneath it." -- (A. G.) for feedmag.com
"Maps of meaning [in society] are charged with a potentially explosive significance because they are traced and retraced along the lines laid down by the dominant discourses about reality, the dominant ideologies. Thus they tend to represent, in however obscure and contradictory a fashion, the interests of the dominant groups in society..." -- (A. G.) for feedmag.com

A subculture is a set of people with a set of behaviors and beliefs, which could be distinct or hidden, that differentiate them from the larger culture of the area from which they are a part of.

Subcultures can be distinctive because of the age, race, ethnicity, class, and/or gender. The qualities that determine a subculture as distinct may be aesthetic, religious, political, sexual, or a combination of these factors. Subcultures are often defined via their opposition to the values of the larger culture to which they belong, although this definition is not universally agreed on by theorists. Members of a subculture will often signal their membership through a distinctive and symbolic use of style. Therefore, the study of subculture often consists of the study of the symbolism attached to clothing, music and other visible affectations by members of the subculture, and also the ways in which these same symbols are interpreted by members of the dominant culture. If the subculture is characterized by a systematic opposition to the dominant culture, then it may be described as a counterculture.

See also

History of subcultures in the 20th century



Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Subculture" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

Personal tools