Workshop on style in relation to youth and subcultures for summer school on Popular Culture & the City, july 2009.

2. Teaser
• Get pissed, destroy!
Pay attention to style
and elements of
resistance

3. Outline
• Historical context of subcultures and style
– Subculture: the meaning of style
• Important changes
• Post-CCCS, post-subcultures
• Discussion: communicating your identity
 Note: more focus on fashion than music due to programming

4. Style
Style = “the materials available to the group
for the construction of subcultural
identities (dress, music, talk)” (Clarke,
Hall, Jefferson, & Roberts, 1976: 53).

5. Style: context of research
CCCS and subculture
• Subculture tied to social background
• Subculture = resistance
• Political statement
• Style as constitutive, symbolic element of
a subculture

6. Style: Hebdige
Study into the meaning of style
• Style = a means to express difference
“The communication of a significant difference,
then (and the parallel communication of a group
identity), is the point behind the style of
spectacular subcultures” (p.102).
• Style = intentional communication of
meaning

7. Style: societal changes
1. More structural differentiation
2. Leisure time more important
3. Changing role of media
Buchmann, M. (2002). Sociology of youth culture,. In N. J. Smelser & P. B.
Baltes (Eds.), International encyclopedia of the social & behavorial sciences (pp.
16660-16664). Amsterdam: Elsevier.

8. Style: societal changes
1. More structural differentiation
 Through the educational system
 Through the welfare state
– More social positions
– Different ways of showing

9. Style: societal changes
1. Leisure time is more important
• Leisure now is lifestyle, way of social
distinction
– Cultural practices
– Sport
– Consumption

10. Style: societal changes
1. Changing role media
• Faster dissemination of new styles
through faster ICTs
• Media offer more cultural materials for
appropriation in the construction of
identity/ies

11. Style: academic changes
 Critique on CCCS
 Post-modernism
• From essentialist to anti-essentialist
• From monolithical to fluid and hybrid

12. Post/subculture
• Subculture ≠ subversive resistance of a social
class
“the analyses of the CCCS (…) no longer appear to reflect the
political, cultural and economic realities of the twenty-first century”
(Weinzierl & Muggelton, 2003, p.5)
• Subcultures = fluid formations
• Blurring between subculture and the mainstream
1. Consumption en commercialization
2. Subcultures are aware of the media
3. “Supermarket of style”

13. Style as communication of identity
Style is intentional communication, a
visible construction to exists to be read,
a way to communicate meaning
(Hebdige, 1979)
• Style as a text
vs style embodied experience

14. Reading style
 Context dependency
 Who wears what on what
occasion in which place in
which company?
 Social variability in signifier-
signified relationship
 Meaning varies according to
taste, social identity and the
access one has to the symbolic
wares of society
(e.g. Nazli in track suit with boots)

15. Conclusion
• Style communicates the self, our social
identities.
• Style is meaningful, but this meaning is
polysemic and variable.
• We need information about the
performer, the performance and the
audience.