modern subcultures have strong boundaries and high commitment, postmodern subcultures are weaker and more fragmented.
Modern subcultures have a strong sense of group identity with high degrees of commitment demanded from members, and a homogenous style with the subculture providing the main source of identity for members. They also tend to be political, social class aligned, anti-media and are seen as authentic by members.
Postmodern subcultures on the other hand have a fragmented sense of identity, require low commitment, have a mixture of styles and and are are only one of multiple identity sources for members. They tend to be apolitical, pro-media and focused mainly on style and image only.
Modern
Postmodern
Group identity
Fragmented identity
Stylistic homogeneity
Stylistic heterogeneity
Strong boundary maintenance
Weak boundary maintenance
Subculture provides main identity
Multiple stylistic identities
High degree of commitment
Low degree of commitment
Membership perceived as permanent
Transient attachment expressed
Low rates of subcultural mobility
High rates of subcultural mobility
Stress on beliefs and values
Fascination with style and image
Political gesture of resistance
Apolitical sentiments
Anti-media sentiments
Positive attitude towards media
Self-perception as authentic
Celebration of the inauthentic
These two ideal types of subculture were developed by Muggleton (2000) to test whether subcultures today were more postmodern.
Muggleton carried out interviews with 57 young people (43 male, 14 female) who were approached in pubs or clubs in Preston and Brighton between 1993 and 1995 to determine whether we have modern or postmodern subcultures today.
Postmodern 1990s Subcultures
Muggleton found that most young people were concerned to express their individuality and did not express strong affiliation to any one subculture.
They saw belonging to a subculture as primarily about expressing their individuality, how they were different from other people within that apparent subculture – standing out was important.
Those interviewed also fitted more to postmodern subcultures in terms of their ideas of the self, commitment and appearance, but many had a long term commitment. to their subcultures and there was little evidence of switching between them.
People did change identities over time, but this wasn’t constant switching, rather gradually transformative.
Muggleton found little evidence of there being divisions between subcultures, mainly because the boundaries had become blurred, and all seemed to share a resistance to the mainstream, although they were generally apolitical.
The media was also an important part of constructing the subculture.
Overall subcultures in the 1990s were best characterised as neo-tribes.
Not purely postmodern
Subcultures were modern, but still seen as authentic sources of identity by members, they weren’t just seen as being about artificial play!
Authentic Identity was seen in terms of the way one felt, rather than dress, so one was a true punk if they felt like one, it wasn’t about dress or appearance.
Subcultures were liminal: in between social identities – they were collective expressions and celebrations of individualism.
Standing out was important, but so was fitting in.
Rave culture: fitting in while standing out!
Evaluation
Sampling was poor – there was no attempt to identify committed members.
Blackman (2005) examines Muggleton’s own data and believes he underplays the extent to which there is modernist regulation and rules of subcultures and he also failed to see the political agenda adopted by much of rave culture against the 1996 Criminal Justice Act.
Signposting and Sources
This material is usually taught as part of the Culture and Identity option within A-level sociology.
Part of this post was adapted from Haralambos and Holborn (2013) Sociology Themes and Perspectives 8th Edition.
Muggleton, D (2000) Inside Subculture: The Meaning of Style
A summary of the Birmingham Centre for Cultural Studies neo-marxist approach to youth subcultures.
The Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (BCCS) developed a Neo-marxist theory of youth subcultures in Post War Britain.
The BCCS published its most influential research in the 1970s and 1980s.
BCCS Theory of Culture
Hall and Jefferson argued that material circumstances imposed limits on the development of culture, and so culture reflected class divisions in society. However culture was not entirely determined by material factors, but rather an active and creative response to the material circumstances or class positions in which people found themselves.
The broader culture an individual is born into shapes the way they see the world, creating a kind of flexible map of meaning which shapes or limits the kind of cultures they create.
Cultures exist in a hierarchical relationship with one another. The culture of elite groups will always be more powerful than others, but is insufficient to be totally dominant and all controlling.
Hall et al used Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, arguing that the dominant ideology of elite culture can be opposed by less powerful classes. Subordinate groups struggle to win space and make room for their own styles, away from the influence of the dominant culture.
Youth Subcultures
The BCCS saw youth subcultures as creative attempts to win autonomy from dominant cultures. They seek to carve out cultural space for themselves within local neighbourhoods and institutions.
Youth cultures create their own distinctive styles of dress and music which solve in an imaginary way some problems which at a concrete, material level remain unresolved.
Youth subcultures tend to emphasise authenticity, it is important the culture comes from the ground up rather than being a creation of the media.
One of the main works outlining the BCCC’s theory of youth subcultures was Hall and Jefferson (1976) Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain.
Tony Jefferson: Teddy Boys
Jefferson (1976) argued that Teddy Boy culture was an attempt to recreate a sense of working class community which had come under threat in postwar Britain due to urban redevelopment and the growing affluence of some sectors of the working class.
Unskilled working class youth felt their social status was being undermined by a combination of urban redevelopment and increasing ethnic minorities in their neighbourhoods.
They responded by developing Teddy Boy culture: with a strong style of dress incorporating Edwardian-style jackets, bootlace ties and suede shows, with groups having a strong sense of loyalty to each other and being prepared to fight over territory.
According to Jefferson the various elements of their chosen styles were an attempt to signify status, drawn from different sources. For example the Edwardian jackets were appropriated from upper class dandies and the bootlace ties drawing on slick city gamblers from U.S. Westerns signifying that they saw themselves as outsiders, living by their wits.
Teddy boy culture was not an effective means of stopping the social changes that were undermining working class status, but it at least made its members feel as if they were doing something and they were an authentic expression of the contradictions being felt by the working classes.
Dick Hebdige: Subculture The Meaning of Style
Subcultures define themselves in opposition to mainstream culture and reject the shared lifestyle and culture of most of mainstream society, and they express resistance to the mainstream creatively through clothing, music and art.
Each youth subculture develops its own style and transforms the meaning of everyday objects. Apparently ordinary, every day objects are appropriated by subcultures and made to carry secret meanings only known by members of that subculture which expresses a form of resistance to the social order,
For example, Teddy boys transformed the meanings of Edwardian suits and boots, punks transformed the meaning of safety pins and ripped jeans.
However although this resistance or opposition is an important source of identity for the members of subcultures, resistance tends to remain only at the symbolic level, which guarantees their continued subordination.
Punk Culture
According to Hebdige, Punk culture almost rewrote the rules of semiology, in some ways changing the way signs were used to convey meaning.
Punk emerged in Britain in the late 1970s and was popular into the early 1980s. It drew some meaning from Rastafarianism and Reggae, for example the Clash incorporated reggae rhythms into their music and some punks wore the red gold and green of Rastafarians.
Punk also adopted an opposition to being British, being anti-monarchy, as exampled in the S*x Pistols classic song: God Save the Queen.
Punk also defined itself against the empty commercialism of pop music, and tried to break down the barrier between performer and artist, encouraging anyone to form a band even if they could only play a couple of chords.
There was a claim to speak for the neglected white working class youth, acting out the alienation associated with the experiences of unemployment, living on poor housing estates and feeling abandoned by the system.
However, with punk there was often no solution to the social malaise of early 1980s Britain , no future.
Punk and Chaos
For Hebdige, punk subculture signified chaos at several levels. A lack of identifiable values was the main value of Punk culture.
Some symbols they used were highly detached, showing a lack. of meaning, for example the swastika was a popular punk icon, despite the fact that Punks were mostly anti-nazi and anti-racist.
Conventional semiotics can’t deal with punk, where signifiers are separated from signified. To understand punk culture, Hebdige developed the idea of signifying practices: the relationship between langue (the structure of language) and parole (individual usages of language) is reversed. Rather than meaning deriving from the overall structure of the language, meaning derives from the position of the person using it.
For example, the swastika’s meaning derived from the fact that punks were punks and nothing deeper.
Hebdige also applied Marxism seeing punk subculture as a form resistance to the experienced contradictions within ruling class ideology.
Ultimately punk posed no major threat to the ruling class but it did produce ‘noise’ – an alternative source of idea which interferes with the ruling classes attempt to create the sense of harmony in society.
Evaluations of the BCCCs and Hebdige
There is no evidence that any of subcultures Hebdige studied interpreted their own cultures in the same way he did, his theory is just one interpretation and there are many ways of interpreting subcultures.
It is possible that in the 1970s and before subcultures were class based, but from the 1980s the growth of consumerism meant that subcultures cut across class divisions, being based mainly on taste and style rather than stemming from any kind of opposition to the system.
The CCCS seemed to assume that subcultures were national, but in reality they may have had regional variations.
It could be that Teddy Boys and Punks were never as oppositional to mainstream culture as the CCCS suggested.
Postmodernist reject the view that well-defined subcultures ever existed. In the past, as today, they were rather more fluid and people kind of dipped into them rather than existed entirely within them.
Signposting and sources
This material is mainly relevant to the culture and identity module, usually taught in the first year of A-level sociology.
The average twenty something in the UK will spend £263K on housing over the next 32 years of their life, and many will spend considerably more, which is, let’s face it, an enormous sum of money.
What I find deeply offensive about this astronomical figure is that there are a few brave souls currently engaged in what you might call ‘experiments in alternative living’ which demonstrate that it really is possible to live well without mortgaging your life away – for example, the house below cost £3K and took only 10 days to build.
Given this, I think normal housing strategies are in need of serious reconsideration, and to this end this post provides a number of experiments in alternative housing options which means you don’t have to spend £300K on housing yourself over the next 3 decades!
The Housing Norm in the UK (which is just NUTS!)
According to this is money, a typical first-time buyer who buys a £151,000 home with a £121,000 repayment mortgage over 25 years will pay back £191,600, calculated at 4% interest. This works out at £638 a month or £7664 a year, which is equivalent to 9 years worth of earnings on the median-salary. Of these repayments, interest accounts for £191, 600 – £121, 000 = £70, 000.
Previous to buying their first property, A recent report by Santander found that the average person spends 7.4 years renting paying an average monthly rent of £474, totalling £42, 000,
Combined with the £191.6k loan repayment and the £30K assumed deposit in the scenario above this gives a total 32 year average spend on basic housing costs of £263 600. Obviously, if you are twenty-something, you have the choice to follow a similar path-to-property ownership and just settle for paying out an overall average of £600/ month for 32 years.
Obviously you have the choice to follow a similar path-to-property ownership and just settle for paying out an overall average of £600/ month for 32 years. Or, like me, you might think this is totally nuts and consider doing all, or any of the following in order to reduce this figure…
Live with your parents for the rest of your life
Squat someone else’s second (or third/ fourth/ fifth etc….) property
Live in a van
Buy some land and live on it without planning permission
Set up a low impact eco-village
A key part of the sociological imagination is to make the familiar seem strange and to wake people up to how odd ‘normal’ actually is. In the case of housing, I think it’s very strange that so many of us just go along with paying so much for something that really needn’t cost so much.
This post is really just about raising awareness that are alternatives to this crazy mortgage debt-cycle, and the above five alternatives are all viable, even if challenging….
One – Live with your parents – until they die.
According to the Office for National Statistics, A total of 3.3 million 20- to 34-year-olds lived with their parents in 2013, the highest number since it started keeping records in 1996.
While the prospect of a 34 year old still living with their parents may sound sad, it is good for your finances. Taking the average rent of £5688/ year, if someone were to live with their parents from the age of 20-34, they could potentially save £80 000, and that’s before accumulations on savings are factored in, and for the ultimate savings on housing costs, you could just live with your parents until they die, which is what 42% of current renters are waiting for in order to be able to get their foot on that first rung of the property ladder.
Two – Squat
Squatting means to unlawfully occupy an uninhabited building or settle on a piece of land.
Until recently squatting in England and Wales was generally a civil matter, not a criminal matter, However, in 2012 Squatting was technically criminalised by the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (LASPO) 2012, section 144 of the LASPO made it a criminal offence to trespass in residential properties with the intention of living there.
However, a few test cases have revealed that if the police find you squatting a building, charge you with squatting and you plead not-guilty, it is actually nearly impossible for the prosecuters to prove that you were actually living in the building permanently. Also, the law does not cover non-residential properties.
There are a few things you need to get right in order squat a property for any length of time –The squatter’s advisory service recommend the following –
You need to make sure you do not commit criminal damage to get into the property, and repair any such damage that someone else has done immediately after you take up occupation.
Always make sure somone is in the property, because if the property is vacant you can be evicted.
You should contact the utilities providors asap to prove that you intend to pay.
When the police turn up, do not give them entry, talk to them through the door, and finally research who the owner is so you know who you are up against when you go to court, and don’t expect them to be too happy about it the fact that you’re squatting their property.
It’s difficult to say exactly how many people squat in the UK exactly given that squatters don’t generally want to draw attention to themselves, but there are some high profile, political examples – One of the most interesting being Grow Heathrow which was established in an abandoned market garden site in Sipson, one of the villages due to be completely tarmaced to make way for a third runway at Heathrow. Over the past four years the site has played host to a wide range of political gatherings for groups such as: UK Uncut, Climate Camp, Reclaim the Fields, and The Transition Network, so you would need a certain amount of subcultural capital to fit in to this network, but if you can embed yourself comfortably into that sort of thing, then the payback is free accomodation, and probably food too.
Also of interest is this site – Made Possible by Squatting which is an exhibition from September 2013 documenting stories of how squatting has benefitted the lives of individuals and communities in London- against the backdrop of the government’s attempts to criminalise squatting.
Three – Live in a Van
Admitedly this doesn’t seem to be a very popular option here in the UK, so firstly to America for some inspiration…. To Simplify is a blog by someone called Glen, whose been living a mobile life for over 5 years in a heavily converted 1988 Volkswagen Vanagon, which he describes as the closest thing to a home he’s ever owned. The blog simply documents Glen’s life on the open road, and he also details his total van conversion, from totally gutting the original van and then installing a whole range of new features – not least of all the engine and a solar electricity system. I particularly like this picture in which Glen’s parked up with other, more typical American mobile home dwellers – it sort of sums up his philosophy.
Bringing it back across the Atlantic, El Pocito is a nice little blog which, among many other things of an alternative nature, outlines the experience of two art teachers, originally from the UK who spent 9 years travelling through Spain and Portugal in their converted van. The site offers some excellent advice on the realities of van-living on the continent.
Campervan Life is a web site devoted to providing advice on buying, converting and living in a camper van, set up by a guy called Darren who bought a cheap Mercedes Sprinter (£1000 in 2006), learnt how to convert it on-the-job with no prior experience or any significant background in DIY and then travelled around Europe in it for 9 months. He lists the ‘van-travel’ related costs of his trip at under £3K, and although he doesn’t appear to include costs of the conversion can’t imagine it would have cost more than £1000, which means that in total Darren had almost a year of comfortable living and travel for under £5K, which is cheaper than the average rent in the UK.
While there are no doubt hundreds of people who live in vans long-term in the UK, but hardly any of them document their experience, hardly surprising given the degree of prejudice against ‘travellers’. The only example I could find was of a guy (who, incidentally has a job!) who’s put a few videos up on youtube outlining aspects of his life in a converted ambulance. In this clip he’s talking about his ‘split charge relay’ while smoking a king size roll up (contents undisclosed)
Incidentally, living in a van may sound like it’s an extreme strategy for saving money, and possibly only for hippies, and you’d be forgiven for making this mistake given that one of the first search returns for ‘living in a van uk’ takes you to a forum called ‘UK HIPPY’, but there are even members of the relatively conservative caravan club who have lived in their caravans long-term, combining this with either owning a small no-frills apartment, or house-sitting.
Four – Buy some land and just build without planning permission
In eco-circles, the best known example of someone who has actually done this is Tony Wrench and his partner, who built their own low-impact roundhouse for about £3K in 10 days (picture above). Actually, this may be the only example of a couple who have managed to do this and get away with gaining retrospective planning permission, others, such as the couple who built the beautiful hobbit-house below don’t seem to have been so lucky.
Shortly to be torn down because local planners judged it to be ‘out of touch with the countryside’
For this reason, although this particular strategy is the one I intend to adopt at some point in the future, you might be better off going for option five…..
Five – Set up a low-impact community
There aren’t very many low impact communities in the UK, this is a very emergent phenomenon, but one example of a group who have managed to get temporary planning for their dwellings is Tinker’s Bubble, a community of 11 adults and 2 children based in Somerset who live on 28 acres of land in self-built houses, grow most of their own food and are fossil-fuel free. I don’t have too many about the economics of the place, but the dwellings most of them live in seem to be of Tony Wrench’s low impact design and the weekly contribution for food is only £20, so compared to the average mortgage-monkey, this represents a significant saving.
One of the most inspiring recent examples is that of Llammas. Based in Pembrokeshire, on about 75 acres of land, this is one of the few fully legitimate (in planning terms) eco-projects in the U.K. It combines the traditional smallholding model with the latest innovations in environmental design, green technology and permaculture. The ecovillage was granted planning permission in 2009 by the Welsh Government and is currently part-way through the construction phase. The dwellings being built here are more robust than those in Tinker’s Bubble, and thus more expensive, but over the course of a lifetime these individuals will save themselves well over a £100K per person compared to the average, and have a significantly higher quality of life into the bargain.
In conclusion
Although all of the above involve more hassle than the standard massive-mortgage route to home ownership, personally I think a little discomfort and risk is worth it given the injustice involved with said mortgage route – via which you pay tens of thousands of pounds to people who simply haven’t done anything to earn it.
Subcultural Theory explains deviance in terms of a deviant group, split apart from the rest of the society which encourages deviance
Historical Period: The 1940s- 60S, Underclass Theory – 1980s
Albert Cohen: Status Frustration
working class boys try to gain status within school and fail, thus suffer status frustration
Some such boys find each-other and form a subculture
status is gained within the subculture by breaking mainstream rules.
Cloward and Ohlin: Illegitimate Opportunity Structure(IOS)
A combination of strain theory and subcultural theory
The type of subculture an individual joins depends on existing subcultures (which form an IOS)
There are three types of subculture: Criminal (working class areas/ organised petit crime), Conflict (less table populations), and Retreatist (e.g. drug subcultures) which C and O saw as being formed by people who lacked the skills to join the former two).
Walter Miller: Focal Concerns
Saw the lower working class as a subculture with its own set of unique values
Working class culture emphasised six focal concerns (or core values) which encouraged criminal behaviour amongst working class youth.
Three examples of these focal concerns where toughness (physical prowess), excitement (risk-taking) and smartness (being street-smart)
Charles Murray: Underclass Theory
By the 1980s an Underclass had emerged in Britain.
Key features = long term unemployment, high rates of teen pregnancies and single parent households
Means children are not socialised into mainstream norms and values and have become NEETS
The underclass is 20 times more criminal than the rest of society.
Overall Evaluations of Subcultural Theories of Crime
Positive
Negative
Unlike Bonds of Attachment Theory recognises that much crime is done in groups, not lone individuals
Unlike Functionalism does not see crime as functional.
X – Contemporary research shows gang (subculture) membership is more fluid than the above research stuggests
X – Recent research shows that the underclass doesn’t really exist and working class culture is more complex
X – There is a much wider variety of subcultures today
X – Ignores the role of agents of social control labelling in subculture formation
X – Underclass Theory is ideological – based on moral panics
subcultural theorists argue that deviance occurs because of peer pressure within a subculture that has broken off from mainstream society. This post covers ‘consensus subcultural theory’ including Albert Cohen’s status frustration and Cloward and Ohlin’s three types of subculture.
Subcultural Theory: The Basics
A Subculture is a group that has values that are different to the mainstream culture. Subcultural theorists argue that deviance is the result of whole groups breaking off from society who have deviant values (subcultures) and deviance is a result of these individuals conforming to the values and norms of the subculture to which they belong.
In contrast to Social Control theorists, it is the pull of the peer group that encourages individuals to commit crime, rather than the lack of attachment to the family or other mainstream institutions. Subcultural theory also helps explain non-utilitarian crimes such as vandalism and joy riding which strain theory cannot really explain. Deviance is a collective response to marginalisation.
four subcultural social theorists of deviance you should know about…
1. Albert Cohen’s Status Frustration Theory 2. Cloward and Ohlin’s three types of subculture 3. Walter Miller – the focal concerns of the working class 4. Charles Murray – the underclass and Crime (links to the New Right)
Albert Cohen: Deviant Subcultures emerge because of Status Frustration
Albert Cohen argues that working class subcultures emerge because they are denied status in society. Just like Merton, Cohen argued that working class boys strove to emulate middle-class values and aspirations, but lacked the means to achieve success. This led to status frustration: a sense of personal failure and inadequacy.
Cohen argued that many boys react to this by rejecting socially acceptable values and patterns of acceptable behaviour. Because there are several boys going through the same experiences, they end up banding together and forming delinquent subcultures.
This delinquent subculture reverses the norms and values of mainstream culture, offering positive rewards (status) to those who are the most deviant. Status may be gained by being malicious, intimidating others, breaking school rules or the law and generally causing trouble.
This pattern of boys rejecting mainstream values and forming delinquent subcultures first starts in school and then becomes more serious later on, taking on the form of truancy and possibly gang membership
Cloward and Ohlin’s 3 types of subculture
Cloward and Ohlin develop Cohen’s subcultural theory further, expanding on it in order to try and explain why different types of subculture emerge in different regions. They suggest that the ‘illegitimate opportunity structure’ affects what type of subculture emerges in response to status frustration – The varied social circumstances in which working-class youth live give rise to three types of delinquent subculture.
1. Criminal Subcultures are characterised by utilitarian crimes, such as theft. They develop in more stable working class areas where there is an established pattern of crime. This provided a learning opportunity and career structure for aspiring young criminals, and an alternative to the legitimate job market as a means of achieving financial rewards. Adult criminals exercise social control over the young to stop them carrying out non-utilitarian delinquent acts – such as vandalism – which might attract the attention of the police.
2. Conflict subcultures emerge in socially disorganised areas where there is a high rate of population turnover and a consequent lack of social cohesion. These prevent the formation of stable adult criminal subcultures Conflict subcultures are characterised by violence, gang warfare, ‘mugging’ and other street crime. Both approved and illegal means of achieving mainstream goals are blocked or limited, and young people express their frustration at this situation through violence or street crime, and at least obtain status through success in subcultural peer-group values. This is a possible explanation for the gang culture which is increasingly appearing in run down areas of the UK, and possibly explains the UK riots of 2011.
3. Retreatist subcultures emerge among those lower class youth who are ‘double failures’ – they have failed to succeed in both mainstream society and in the crime and gang cultures above. The response is a retreat into drug addiction and alcoholism, paid for by petty theft, shoplifting and prostitution
Evaluations of consensus subcultural theories
Paul Willis’ 1977 study of the Counter-School-Culture represents a Marxist critique of consensus subcultural theory. Willis argued that the working class lads formed a subculture in order to ‘have a laff’ in a school system which they had accurately identified as being irrelevant to their futures. Unlike Cohen, these lads never aspired to be middle class, they identified themselves as working class, rejected middle class aspirations, and rejected the middle class system of the school – thus why Willis coined the term ‘counter (against) school culture’.
David Matza has developed what might cautiously be termed an Interactionist approach to understanding subcultures. Matza suggested that there were no distinct subcultures among young people. Rather, all groups in society share a set of subterranean values. These are simply deviant values that encourage us to go against social norms – the urge to party hard, drink too much, swear, stealing, punch the idiots you work with and sleep with your brother’s wife etc. These are usually held under control, but sometimes emerge at peak leisure times – weekends, holidays and so on. The difference between a persistent offender and a law-abiding citizen is simply how often and in what circumstances these subterranean values emerge.
Postmodernists point out that the nature of subcultures today has changed, in that subcultures are much more common today than they were in the 1960s. Today, subcultures are just a normal part of life. Subcultural theory assumes that there are ‘mainstream norms and values’ which subcultures deviate from. This is wrong according to Postmodernism – in society today, deviance and hence subcultures are ‘normal’, which renders the whole of subcultural theory irrelevant in helping us to understand crime and deviance.
Signposting and Related Posts
Subcultural theories of deviance are the second group of theories of crime on the A level crime and deviance specification (AQA), normally taught after functionalist and strain theories.
Until recently squatting in England and Wales was generally a civil matter, not a criminal matter, However, in 2012 Squatting was technically criminalised by the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (LASPO) 2012, section 144 of the LASPO made it a criminal offence to trespass in residential properties with the intention of living there.
