Term
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Definition
"Culture is the best that has been thought and said in the world"
Study of perfection
cultured vs uncultured
obtain culture by reading, observing thinking
culture counteracts anarchy |
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Definition
approached culture by focusing on the powerful internalized beliefs and values that individual actos in society held
Focused on meaningful action
unit of analysis=individual
central concern=how ones worldview motivated ones actions |
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| Caplows study of gift giving |
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Definition
Americans dont believe in gift giving, and the practice enjoys little normative support, but the practice persists nonetheless
Gift giving constitutes a cultural code
culture is powerful independent of whether people believe in it |
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Definition
• Collective representations constitute culture
• Did not emphasize the worldviews that people hold
• Emphasized how representations, rituals and symbols constitute group life
• Developed notion that culture is a shared, collective product |
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Term
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Definition
• Culture is shared understanding that enables concerted action
o The collective possession of shared understandings allows for activity that meshes and is cooperative
o If everyone has the same general ideas, what people do will fit together
o We can think of culture as a toolkit that helps us to understand and navigate the world in which we live
Culture explains how people act in concert when they DO share understanding. shared understandings provide a blueprint for action
culture develops through a process of symbolic negotiation
culture is always being made because under new conditions, people invent/change culture |
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Term
| Becker and High/Low Culture |
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Definition
• High culture: work recognized as belonging to an honored category of cultural understandings by people who have the power to make that distinction and make it accepted by others. Examples include: hobbies, the playthings of political and religious leaders as well as of people of power and privilege in general
• Distinguished by: financial and cultural access. Becker's problem with high culture is that the things that are part of high culture were put there by people with power.
• the difference between high culture and low culture does not lie in the work so honored, but in the process of honoring. |
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| Common understandings of subculture |
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Definition
o Generally viewed as oppositional
o Defined in contrast to what is normative
o Seen as more impermanent than a community
o Often perceived as disaffected, disenfranchised, and even debased |
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| The traditional conceptualization |
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Definition
• Subcultures possess three main characteristics
• 1. Exclusivity:
o Interactions frequently or exclusively within the group.
• 2. A Shared Worldview:
o Shares a common worldview (Weltanschauung) that has at its center that characteristic that defines the group most thoroughly
• 3. Incomplete Assimilation:
o Remains unwilling or unable to assimilate into the larger, dominant culture. |
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Term
| Subculture vs. Counterculture |
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Definition
• While subcultures are merely set apart from broader society, countercultures are both set apart and actively resistant to dominant culture
• Countercultures are generally organized around a set of beliefs or unique worldview as opposed to an activity or practice
• The terms are not mutually exclusive. We can categorize a group as both a subculture and a counterculture |
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Term
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Definition
Definition: refers to a distinctive way of life that develops around a particular activity.
• Unlike subcultures, people who engage in a particular social world blend easily into the wider culture and participate in the wider, common culture.
• Social worlds will, however, include some distinctive elements, including a particular jargon and an in-depth familiarity with a particular activity.
• This activity will be the central focus not just of one particular social group but of a loose network of social groups, including occupations, professions, organizations, and institutions. |
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Definition
which can be defined as two (diad) or more people who interact regularly and identify with one another.
• Social groups, even the smallest two-person groups, tend to develop their own particular habits, practices, verbal expressions, traditions, and other signs of their shared history. |
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Term
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Definition
o The local customs, practices, or habits of a group, particularly a group with an associated setting, such as a particular work group, organization, family, friendship group, and so on.
o Usually associated with a specific kind of setting |
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Term
| SW, Sub, Idio? Fraternity |
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Definition
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Term
| SW, Sub, Idio? Weather Underground |
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Definition
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| SW, Sub, Idio? Break Dancers |
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Definition
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| SW, Sub, Idio? Christian Youth Group |
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Definition
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| SW, Sub, Idio? Staff at a restaurant |
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Definition
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Definition
• We should view mainstream cultures, social worlds, idiocultures, and subcultures on a continuum, not as rigid categories
o Mainstream culture <----------> subculture |
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Term
| Chicago School of Sociology |
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Definition
• The Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago dominated sociological theory and practice in the US from the early 20th century until the mid-1930s (Established 1892)
• While the school began as formal organization, it now refers to a set of ideas and activities
• Spawned the American Tradition of Subculture Studies through its focus on “marginal” and “unassimilated” social types
*Roots of American Subculture Studies |
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Term
| Chicago School principles |
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Definition
• The department’s original members shared a concern for improving society
• Desire to merge social science with a finely-tuned moral compass
• Desire to develop a secular code of morality
• Department members were fascinated by cultural differences
o Endeavored to gain insight into the ways in which people see the world by studying them in their “natural settings.”
o Concern with how the dimensions of time and space influence human behavior |
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Term
| How did the Chicago school view the city of Chicago |
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Definition
as a social laboratory that alowed them to study social problems and social change during a period of industrialization
viewed city as a series of distinctive zones to which socially culturally/similar people were attracted |
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Term
| Chicago School Research Methods |
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Definition
• The emphasis on understanding people in their native environments called for researchers to get out of their offices and into the world in order to actively do sociology
• Thus, the department borrowed ethnographic methods from anthropology, emphasizing participant observation
o Sociologists should venture into the field not so much to collect data but to observe
o Go into places where underworlds flourish and cohabitate with the respective peoples
o Also made extensive use of life histories in order to inform how society shapes individuals, and how individuals shape society |
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Term
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Definition
• A theoretic perspective that arose from the department’s scholarly interests and research methods
o Humans construct meaning through active processes of negotiation
o Action results from the meanings that people attach to their behaviors
o Emphasis placed on the active, interpretive, constructive capacities of human beings |
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Term
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Definition
| important to the culture itself, not researchers. Inside- more interpretive understanding (Verstehen/Chicago School) |
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Definition
| categories researchers come up with that they find important to the culture itself. Outsider-more like statistical analysis, etc |
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Definition
| are, like subcultures, set apart from mainstream culture, but they are also ACTIVELY RESISTANT to mainstream culture. Subculture and counterculture are not mutually exclusive (one thing can be both). |
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Term
| Polsky: Tips for criminologists |
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Definition
o Must learn to suspend moralistic judgment and empathize with subjects
o Learn to take point of view of the group
o Must choose b/t being a good researcher OR being a good citizen
o Minimize contamination of subject’s natural environment by avoiding gadgets and note taking
o Keep your mouth shut – delay questions until you understand culture
o Don’t read into argot, doesn’t always explain culture
o Use snowballing techniques to build sample
o Reveal research interests at first
o Be forthcoming with subjects, answer questions
o Know where to draw a line between you and the member
o Attempt to not stick out
o Have some unbreakable rules
o 3 problems: safety, moral dilemmas, people with no solid identity |
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Term
| "Genuine" field research (Polsky) |
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Definition
| we must immerse ourselves in a society to understand it, do away with data, we must become good journalists/reporters, look at people, listen to them, think and feel with them and talk with them-not at them. |
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Term
| 3 basic problems of criminology field work |
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Definition
| safety, moral dilemmas and those people who do not have a guaranteed identity and therefore want to be like them, also the idea that you HAVE to become a criminal and that most underworld people will refuse interviews are both obstacles to fieldwork |
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Term
| Interpretive Understanding (Verstehen/Polsky) |
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Definition
• Put another way, Polsky suggests that the sociologist must learn to suspend moralistic judgment and empathize with the thoughts, beliefs and feelings of her research subjects
• This line of thinking derives from Weber, who argued that when studying unfamiliar cultures, researchers must learn to take the point-of-view of group members rather than interpreting the group members through their (the researcher’s) own concepts.
• For us, that means that in order to explain and understand subcultures, we must access the first-person perspective of those who participate within them |
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Term
| Polsky: doing field research well |
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Definition
• Minimize contamination of the subject’s natural environment by avoiding gadgets and by avoiding note-taking in the subject’s presence
• Until you learn the subject’s frame of reference and language, keep your mouth shut. Delay questions until you have a minimal sense of the culture
• Be wary of reading into subcultural argot. We cannot accurately assess subcultural lifestyle through an of language alone
• Use snowballing techniques in order to build a sample. If you lack contacts to a scene, pursue them through the common interests you might share with relevant individuals
• After making new contacts, reveal your research interests quickly. The underworld member will often believe that the study holds something for her as well.
• Be forthcoming with your research subjects. Answer their questions. They must develop a sense of who you are and a level of comfort with who you are before revealing their inner lives.
• Know where to draw a line between yourself and the underworld member.
• Although you should not conceal your role as a researcher, you must also make an attempt to blend into the culture somewhat—to not stick out
• Have few unbreakable rules |
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Term
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Definition
• Society sets cultural goals, which members are expected to achieve (i.e. the American Dream)
• Society also defines socially acceptable (and unacceptable) means for achieving those goals
• In America, emphasis is placed on the goals of monetary success and the attainment of power, while hard work is designated as the appropriate means for achieving them |
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Term
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Definition
Robert Merton
• A sense of normlessness, meaninglessness, and purposelessness |
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Term
| Anomies generally result from what conditions? |
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Definition
o An absence of social norms and values (Durkheim)
o A mismatch between individual circumstances and societal mores and values (Merton)
• Merton argues that individuals adapt to anomic conditions in order to avoid succumbing to depression and existential terror
o People develop individual ways of satisfying cultural goals, which help them to manage the devastation of anomie |
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Term
| Mode of Adaptation: Conformist |
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Definition
Cultural Goals: +
Institutional Means: + |
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Term
| Mode of Adaptation: Innovator |
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Definition
Cultural Goals: +
Institutional Means: - |
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Term
| Mode of Adaptation: Retreatist |
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Definition
Cultural Goals: -
Institutional Means: - |
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Term
| Mode of Adaptation: Ritualist |
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Definition
Cultural Goals: - Institutional Means: +
Office Space |
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Term
| Mode of Adaptation: Rebeller |
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Definition
Cultural Goals: +/- Institutional Means: +/-
Mode of adaptation that produces subcultures |
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Term
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Definition
• Subcultures represent rebellion adaptations to anomie
o Participants feel alienated from reigning cultural goals and standards for achieving them
o They develop new goals and standards for achievement through the subculture
• The experience of stress and frustration by a group motivates collective action
o Strain—particularly of the economic variety—results in deviance
o Groups develop unique cultures to accommodate their problems and obstacles |
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Term
| Status frustration occurs when |
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Definition
| individuals cannot achieve respect in the eyes of society (Cohen) |
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Term
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Definition
• Status frustration occurs when individuals cannot achieve respect in the eyes of society.
• Young people in the lower classes disproportionately face inequalities and disadvantages, generating status problems.
• Individuals who share these problems gravitate toward one another, establishing new norms and criteria for status.
• Define possessed characteristics as meritorious relative to society’s stated goals and means
• Those whose senses of self-worth are unsatisfactory in the existing order find reassurance within the new group |
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Term
| According to Cressey, why do young women pursue careers as taxi dancers? |
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Definition
o Before taxi-dance halls there weren’t many pleasant jobs for women
o More exciting job, economic appeal, an escape for monotony and normality
o Becoming a taxi hall dancer is seen as a solution to a social problem |
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Term
| What is the cycle of retrogression through which the taxi dancers proceed? |
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Definition
| become taxi dancer, slowly begin to lose status as they get older and less “exciting” to customers, downgrade to prostitution to make up for loss of revenue, then most often are forced to reassimilate back into mainstream culture. |
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Term
| According to Albert Cohen (in lecture) what types of people tend to participate in subculture? |
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Definition
| young people in lower classes-individuals who share these problems gravitate towards one another establishing new norms and criteria status. |
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Term
| What is Cohen's general theory of subculture? |
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Definition
| when a number of young people suffer from a common problem of adjustment and are in frequent contact with one another engage in cultural innovation to form subculture |
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Term
| According to Becker, what central problem do jazz musicians face? |
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Definition
| that they are technically performing a service, and therefore experience all of the problems shared by members of the service industry (because workers come into direct contact with their product, they often feel that they are unappreciated within the industry and undervalued). |
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Term
| How do jazz musicians view themselves? |
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Definition
| Musicians are faced with a difficult dilemma : if they chose to be independent and not cater to the demands of outsiders/”squares” (ex: dance club owner), they maintain self respect and respect of other jazz musicians for not “selling out”, but this often results in financial ruin. If a musician decides to “sell” his music by playing popular songs which do not challenge him musically and exploit his talent, he will enjoy a steady income but has cheapened himself as an artist. CONVENTIONAL SUCCESS vs. ARTISTIC STANDARDS. |
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Term
| How do jazz musicians behave and why? |
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Definition
if no one can tell a musician how to play his music, then no one can tell a musician how to do anything. The greatest musicians are considered to be the greatest characters; they behave recklessly without regard to social norms, which brings admiration and intrigue, making them exponentially more popular.
• Musicians also do not attempt to push social norms on anyone else – they will tolerate almost any behavior form fellow musicians. “Squareness” vs. “hipness”. |
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Term
| What does ATSS stand for? |
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Definition
| American Tradition of Subcultural Studies |
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Term
| What does CCCS stand for? |
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Definition
| Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies |
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Term
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Definition
is the study of signs. Its basic concern involves how meaning is generated and conveyed. Semiotics applies linguistic tools of analysis and culture.
*Hebdige |
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Term
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Definition
which is a symbolic fit between a groups values/lifestyles and its means to express them
*Hebdige |
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Term
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Definition
subverting the meanings for which objects were intended by adapting them for different uses and ordering them according to an alternative logic. Subculturalists do not create new signs, they reorder extant ones.
*PPl take objects and give them new meanings to create style
*Hebdige |
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Term
| What changes were residents of the East End experiencing after WWII? How did the socio-economic conditions of post-war Britain influence the arguments that members of the CCCS made and the conclusions that they drew? |
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Definition
| • The residents of the East End were experiencing the breaking up of their families because the neighborhoods were being rebuilt for nuclear families/large extended families. The community spirit was being broken as well and more commercial development was taken place. These new communities were not structured for community interaction and the houses were meant to accomadate the middle class families. The CCCS or the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies. These members moved away from the study of criminolgy, urban sociology and deviance. They focus their attention instead on popular media, culture, literature and every day life. |
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Term
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Definition
| one’s relationship to the means of production in society |
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Term
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Definition
| the lived experience of the relationship by which two groups of people economically relate to one another |
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Term
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Definition
| refers to the process through which subordinate classes actively consent to domination by a super-ordinate class |
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Term
| Why do members of the British Tradition convey subcultures as "magical solutions" to problems? |
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Definition
| • Because they believe that by being involved with or a member of a subculture will make the outside world "disappear". When in reality the real world continues moving forward around them, being a member of a subculture like the Mods it not a solution to the real dead end life that is ones reality. |
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Term
| Why does Willis argue that the school system reproduces capitalism's class relations? |
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Definition
-“Cultural location” explains social mobility more so than intelligence
o -When knowledge is devalued and authority loses its justification, the classroom’s exchange relationship breaks down
o -Lad’s culture mirrors the shop floor culture of their fathers, thereby socializing them for working-class jobs |
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Term
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Definition
the process whereby the typical exchanges expected in the formal institutional paradigm are reinterpreted, separated, and discriminated with respect to working-class interests, feelings and meanings. Its dynamic is opposition to the institution, which is taken up and reverberated and given a form of reference to the larger themes and issues of the class culture
*Process through which the working class values of the students are restricted in the school |
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Term
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Definition
the process whereby class oppositions and intentions are redefined, truncated and deposited within sets of apparently legitimate institutional relationships and exchanges
o Where differentiation is the intrusion of the informal into the formal, integrations is the progressive constitution of the informal into the formal or official paradigm |
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Term
| Willis: How do integration and differentiation bear on students' outcomes in school? |
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Definition
| If one approaches school and its authority, it seems, with the ‘right attitude’ then employers and work will also be approached with the ‘right attitude’ in such a way indeed that real social and economic advances can be made- all without the help of academic achievement or success. |
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Term
| What are the differences between the "ideological" and "commodity" forms of incorporation? |
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Definition
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· Commodity form- the conversion of subcultural signs (dress, music, etc.) into mass-produced objects
· Occurs when the “original innovations which signify subcultures are translated into commodities and made generally available”
Ideological form- the labeling and re-definition of deviant behavior by the dominant groups • The dominant culture can respond to symbolic threats in 2 ways: o Deny a group’s “otherness” o Reduce the group to spectacle by trivializing it and/or casting it as beyond analysis |
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Term
| What do the terms "incorporation" and/or "commodification" refer to? |
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Definition
The ways in which the media eventually resituates style within the dominant framework of meaning, bringing it back into line.
o The process of incorporation “repairs” the fractured symbolic order |
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Term
| How do Hebdige and Lamison claim that subcultures lost their authenticity? |
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Definition
| When subculture is commodified, they are completely removed from their contexts and all meanings that they possess and consequently eradicated. This becomes problematic, since subcultures arise in opposition to mainstream society and resist assimilation. |
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Term
| How does the movie Quadrophenia reflect the arguments that members of the CCCS make about subculture? |
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Definition
| • The idea of being torn between the working class of London and upward mobility: Mod Culture solves this. Using subculture as a magical solution |
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Term
| Where did the ATSS emerge? |
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Definition
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Term
| . How to researchers from ATSS approach the study of social life? What do they believe if the key to understanding human behavior? What research methods and theoretic paradigm do they use? |
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Definition
• Symbolic interactionism: nothing has intrinsic meaning, we assign cultural meaning to everything; collectively negotiate culture; action results from meanings that people attach to their behaviors. Stimulus + response is not inherent (Pavlov's operant conditioning). ACTIVE, INTERPRETIVE, CONSTRUCTIVE capacities of humans. EX.A country's flag means different things to different people and we all may interpret it differently. Were focused on studying marginal, unassimilated social types.
• Key to understanding human behavior is to observe people in their natural settings, to get out and “do sociology”. Sociologists should go into places where underworlds flourish and cohabit with the respective people.
• Research methods: IMMERSION! qualitative: Observe, not to just collect data. Cohabitate with members of subcultures. Interested in life histories b/c they wondered how society shapes people and vise versa. |
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Term
| American traditions and views of culture and research methods used |
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Definition
ATSS: focused on marginal, unassimilated social types. Immerse yourself (Polsky).Ethnography, participant organization
• Culture = constructed by the consensus. Nothing has inherent meaning (symbolic interactionism). Studied natural settings of deviants. Studied city of Chicago (social laboratory). Where does sense of self come from? How do you lead a successful life? How do individuals and society mutually constitute each other? |
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Term
| British traditions and views of culture and research methods used |
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Definition
• The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) were more focused on contextualizing culture by studying popular media, pop culture, literature, and everyday life rather than subcultures and deviance. Very Marxist: culture is a reflection of class conflict, it is fought over. Culture is laid atop an economic base; subcultures are a phenomenon of youth, not just lower class. Analyzed subculture from logistical, economic standpoint. Setting was in East End of London where a lot of displacement was happening; was an area that accommodated extended families and a community atmosphere. Was becoming more commercial, with community gathering places being destroyed; modernization.
Does not go into environments. Structural Analysis. |
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Term
| What types of men patronized the taxi-dance halls? |
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Definition
| o Businessmen, Filipinos, black men, various ethnic minority groups: these men are discriminated against in normal society but they are accept at taxi-dance hall |
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Term
| How does Cressey seem to view subculture? Rigidly or fluidly? |
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Definition
| rigidly because he sees taxi dancing as a separate part of society even though they eventually go back to normal life |
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Term
| Cressey and Chicago Sociology |
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Definition
• Cressey exhibits a concern with a social problem and with societal improvement
• He makes uses of ethnography and in-depth interviews
• He also relies on life histories in order to develop his argument
• Thick description and “reporting” characterize his work
• Shows an interest in typologies |
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Term
| Cressey and Strain Theory |
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Definition
• Young women who experience status frustration in the conventional social milieu enter into subculture
• The subculture provides an alternate vehicle to status |
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Term
| • Becker finds that that musicians refer to others as either “hip” or “square.” What kinds of people do these terms reference? How do dance musicians discriminate between those who are “hip” and those who are “square?” How does one become “hip?” |
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Definition
| o They define audiences as “squares.” Even if the audience enjoys Jazz they are not “hip” bc they don’t understand why they like it. To become “hip” you just have to have it it-you can’t just become “hip”. Born with it |
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Term
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Definition
• Behavior, beliefs, or conditions that relatively powerful segments of society view as serious violations of important norms
o Examples: heroin use; atheism; bachelorhood; dog-fighting
• Important clarifications:
o The behaviors may not always be freely chosen
o But choice in the arena of deviance tends to be considered very important
o Deviance is relative: it is linked to how serious the violation is in relation to social norms |
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Term
| Is deviance ALWAYS criminal? |
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Definition
NO. Ex: Mental illness, ideological deviance, cross-dressing
• Criminal activities exist that are not violations of major social norms (Examples: jaywalking; speeding)
Other acts exist that are both deviant and criminal (Examples: murder; rape; treason) |
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Term
| Becker: Constructing Deviance |
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Definition
• Deviance is relative; it concerns judgments that individuals and groups make
• Deviance varies by time period, culture and group. It is not intrinsic to any behavior or set of behaviors
• We should always consider who controls the definition of deviance when investigating associated behavior |
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Term
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Definition
o Middle-class boys who engaged in a variety of deviant and criminal acts
• The Saints manipulated the system in ways that hid their delinquency. |
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Term
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Definition
o Lower-class boys who engaged in a variety of deviant and criminal acts
• The Roughnecks were often an obvious deviant “target” by the community and police |
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Term
| Chambliss: Social Labelling |
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Definition
• The community perceived the Saints as “good boys” who had bright futures and were “sowing their wild oats” before settling down
• They perceived the Roughnecks as delinquents and troublemakers who had poor futures.
• Thus, in the eyes of the community, the Roughnecks were more deviant, even though their behaviors were very similar to those of the Saints.
• As a result, the boys who were Saints grew into successful adults while most of the Roughnecks continued to do poorly |
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Term
| Why does differential treatment occur in social labelling? |
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Definition
| Visibility, Demeanor, Bias |
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Term
| Chambliss: Are acts inherently deviant? |
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Definition
NO! Acts are usually classified as deviant relative to those who commit them.
o Powerful groups tend to negatively label the weaker groups as deviant—especially if their acts challenge them in some way
• Labels often become self-fulfilling prophecies that reinforce associated behaviors. Those who are label as deviant seek to affirm the label
• Reinforcement thus perpetuates deviance, culminating in damaging careers that are consistent with adolescent backgrounds |
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Term
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Definition
• Birmingham, UK (1964)
• Members moved away from the study of criminology, urban sociology and deviance
• Focused their attention instead on popular media, popular culture, literature, and everyday life |
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Term
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Definition
• Viewed culture as an expression of class conflict
• Supplant the Chicago School approach with a focus on structure and history, usually carried out via semiotic analysis
• Subcultures always involve working class youth
CCCS |
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Term
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Definition
• Working class neighborhoods in London—especially the East End
o Gentrification and commercialization of working class neighborhood
o Displacement of kinship and friendship networks
• The New Consumer Society
o Post-war economic boom
o Modernization of industry
o Rising disposable income |
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Term
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Definition
• A British youth subculture that appropriated the fashion and style of the Edwardian period. It was one of the first subcultures to make it acceptable for young people to care about their appearances--to dress for show rather than for need
• It began in London during the 1950s and quickly spread across the UK
• It became associated with American rock and roll
• Members often displayed a hyper-masculine and at times violent persona
• Many had racist and xenophobic dispositions |
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Term
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Definition
• A British youth subculture that originated in London during the 1950s
• They rejected the old-fashioned culture of their working class parents, striving instead for a hip, sexy and smart lifestyle
• They became associated with fashion--especially tailor-made suits--rock/pop music, American soul music, Jamaican ska music, and R&B
• Much of the scene revolved around all-night dance clubs in which amphetamine use was pervasive
• Mods also latched onto Italian motor scooters as a stylistic accoutrement
• They were locked in tensions with the Rockers, whom they viewed as loud, clumsy and oafish
• The subculture had entered a period of substantial decline by 1966, at which point commercialization had fractured the group, and many of the original mods had aged and married. Some “hard mods” transitioned into skinhead subculture |
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Term
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Definition
• A British subculture that emerged in the 1960s among motorcycle riding youth
• They embraced rockabilly music and fashion
• They often bought standard motor bikes, stripped them down and tuned them up in order to give them the appearance of racing bikes
• In many ways, they represented the antithesis of the Mods through their rugged, unrefined appearance and rejection of drug use
• Their style consisted of jeans, leather jackets, t-shirts, and greased hair |
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Term
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Definition
• Emerged among working class youth in Britain during the 1960s
• Their fashion, music and lifestyle drew heavily from the Jamaican Rude Boy and Mod subcultures
• It developed out of Mods who maintained a more working-class image and who wore shorter hair. Many of these “hard Mods” had less disposable income than “smooth Mods” and held down traditional industrial jobs
• They adopted a style that emphasized their working class roots, wearing steel-toe boots, jeans, braces, button-up shirts, t-shirts and cardigans, short cropped hair. Tattoo later became popular amongst many skinheads.
• Some skinheads later became associated with the White Nationalist Front, while others became associated with leftist ideology, namely through an association with punk subculture |
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Term
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Definition
• Emerged in both Britain and the US sometime during 1976-1977
• Reacted against the indulgent, pretentious form that rock music had taken, replacing technical prowess with a celebration of amateurism
• Music often expressed angst, alienation and a sense of fatalism while challenging multiple forms of authority
• While some punks embraced left-wing ideology, others adopted views better characterized by nihilism
• Punk style abided by obscene standards, taking a vile form that deliberately sought to offend mainstream conventions and sensibilities. It included Mohawks, spiked and dyed hair, studded leather jackets, and the use of profane symbols
• It has perhaps endured longer than many other subcultures but has also arguably become much more commodified than others as well |
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• The infrastructure is the mode of production that characterizes society
• Primarily economic |
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• Forms part of society’s superstructure, thus expressing economic relationships
• Classes struggle to define society in a way that represents their interests
• Ruling class attempts to express dominant material relationships in ideal form and represent its interests as the common interests
• Subordinate class attempts to accurately depict its disenfranchisement
• In US culture it is a binding force, in the UK it separates |
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• One’s relationship to the means of production in society
• One group owns society’s means of production, while others own nothing except for their capacity to labor
• The dominant group expropriates the value created by subordinate groups for their own benefit
• Classes are thus assumed to have antagonistic relations with one another and to possess divergent interests |
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| breaks sartorial rules. It disturbs the authorized codes by which the social world is organized through its expression of forbidden content |
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| Style as Intentional Communication |
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Definition
• Conventional style expresses normalcy rather than deviance
o It is invisible, appropriate, and “natural”
• Subcultural style “gives itself to be read.”
o Explicitly uses/abuses style to communicate
o Challenges the status of prevailing codes as “natural” |
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| What are School Counter Cultures? |
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• Teachers view them as groups of “trouble makers”
• They express opposition to the institutional goals of school through an aversion to work and a lack of cooperation with teachers and peers |
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| 2 forms that the nature of opposition take in school countercultures |
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o Some groups resist elements of the formal curriculum
o Some resist elements of the hidden curriculum |
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| Willis: Learning to Labor |
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Definition
• Struggle to win symbolic and physical space from the institution
• Express outrage against authority
• Distinguish themselves through the use of a distinctive style and set of cultural practices
o Clothing, argot, cigarettes, alcohol, sexual prowess
o Countless small acts of resistance
• Emphasize shrewdness and practicality in lieu of learning and theoretical knowledge |
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| Willis: Why do people differentiate in schools |
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• Resistance provides an illusion of self-direction
• “Having a laff” momentarily defeats boredom
• The counter-culture confers a sense of identity |
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| Lamison argues that Americans demand what? |
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Definition
| instant gratification and quickly abandon existing trends in favor of new ones |
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| Lamison: Who selects the nature and content of popular culture |
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Definition
| A select few pre-determine the nature and content of pop culture and then impose it on the passes. They manufacture pop culture |
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| Lamison argues that the culture industry has....? |
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Definition
| co-opted subculture, commodifying it for mass consumption |
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| According to Lamison, Do the terms "underground" and "mainstream" still distinguish cultural categories? |
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| Lamison: Commodities come to define _____? |
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| Lamison: Style loses its authenticity and becomes diluted when ______________? This becomes problematic since subcultures _______? |
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*Removed from its original contexts
*arise in opposition to mainstream society and resist assimilation |
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• Refers to the process through which subordinate classes actively consent to domination by a super-ordinate class
• The dominant classes accomplish this by exerting moral and philosophical leadership over society and by representing their interests as the interests of all of society
• They construct unequal social relations as moral, natural and largely unalterable, hence banishing the consideration of alternatives
• This allows them to rule by persuasion rather than overt, physical coercion
• It is achieved by organizing society in particular ways and through socialization |
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• While class refers to the objective way in which two groups of people economically relate to one another, ideology refers to the lived experience of that relationship.
• Marxists often use it to describe the way in which one groups conceals or distorts the way in which it exploits another group
• Ideology is often built into the physical and social fabric of society (e.g. the structure of a classroom; the eminence of governmental buildings)
• Works through hegemony |
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Definition
The Study of Signs
• Its basic concern involves how meaning is generated and conveyed
• applies linguistic tools of analysis to culture
o It views “texts” as systems of language, emphasizing relationships rather than the essences of “things.” Nothing is thought to have meaning in itself.
o Meaning is thought to ensue from the system that ties sets of signs together. Just as meaning ensues from the way in which we combine words, so it does as well with the way we combine signs.
o The basic relationship is oppositional (e.g. “rich” means nothing outside its relation to “poor”).
*Hebdige |
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• Unlike a symbol, the relationship between the two is arbitrary, which complicates the task of unlocking a sign’s meaning.
• The meanings of signs do not give themselves to readers--readers must elicit them.
• Hebdige views style as a language and applies the rules of linguistics to it.
o He attempts to decode the grammar around which subcultural style is organized.
o With subcultural style, we do not know the signs, what they signify, or the logic that gives them meaning. This confuses the messages and information that subcultures communicate. |
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• Describes the symbolic fit between a group’s values/lifestyle and its means to express them
• Hebdige thus claims that subcultural style is highly ordered
• Subculturalists cull objects from dominant culture, reassemble them according to the subcultural logic, and make them reflect and express aspects of group life |
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| Hebdige claims that subculture style is highly ______? |
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| • The media eventually resituates style within the dominant framework of meaning, bringing it back into line. • The process of incorporation “repairs” the fractured symbolic order in two ways:Commodity form and Ideological form |
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| The Commodity Form (notes) |
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Definition
• The conversion of subcultural signs into mass-produced objects.
• Occurs when the “original innovations which signify subculture are translated into commodities and made generally available” (p.123).
• Youth subcultures begin by levying symbolic challenges but inevitably end by establishing new conventions. |
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| The Idealogical Form (Notes) |
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Definition
• Labeling and redefining deviant behavior vis-à-vis dominant groups
• The dominant culture can respond to symbolic threats in two ways
o Deny a group’s “otherness”
o Reduce the group to spectacle by trivializing it and/or casting it as beyond analysis (the argument that subcultural style is anarchy—that it means nothing) |
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