Beyond Subculture

Youth subcultures, normalisation and drug prohibition: The politics of contemporary crisis and change?

“…Lipsitz (1994, p. 110) sees the problem of Hebdige's analysis of race and subculture as disguising the contradictions of 'blocked class politics' and as offering 'no autonomous identity', dialogue or creativity for young Black and Asian youth. Back (1996) demonstrates the lack of attention given to ethnic identities, and through his work alongside that of Huq (2006) shows that Black and Asian youth culture research is now more common (Mahendru, 2010). Gilroy (1987Gilroy ( , 1993 has for some time offered corrections to the subcultural tradition and put Black representation at the centre of youth cultural politics, and this has been built upon through an expansion of hip hop studies including Rose (1994), Mitchell (1996), Gidley (2007) and Bradley (2009).…”

“…The trajectory of the contemporary subcultural debate can be set out in a range of positions: 'Post-', 'after-' and 'beyond-' subculture: Redhead (1997), Muggleton (2000), Muggleton and Weinzierl (2003), Bennett and Kahn-Harris (2004), Moore (2004), Greener and Hollands (2006), Huq (2006). Neo tribe: Hetherington (1992), Bennett (1999Bennett ( , 2005 Subculture is a contested concept that fuels argument and forces theorists to take positions in relation to the theory of subculture set out by the CCCS (Hall and Jefferson, 1975).…”

A Clash Of Subcultures? Questioning Queer–Muslim Antagonisms in the Neoliberal City

“…The focus on forms of violence that can be attributed to individual and collectively identifiable perpetrators-the homophobic bullying, the racist slur or even the queer gentrifier--can also distract from those forms that appear in impersonal garb, through the force of rising rents, real estate investment and speculation, regulatory licensing and the governance of 'security'. If the latter are addressed through forms of collective action, as for example through the tenants' initiative Kotti & Co. that in 2012 erected a protest camp in Kreuzberg and has mobilized against rising rents and expulsions, urban residents can (re-)discover 18 The term subculture, developed separately in the context of the Chicago School of Sociology and in the context of the Birmingham-based Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), has come under profound criticism within and beyond the disciplines of Cultural Studies and Sociology (Bennett, 1999;Blackman, 2005;Huq, 2005;Muggleton, 2005) for its alleged reification of cultural processes and its inability to capture the complexity of cultural agency. I nevertheless find it useful here for the purposes of this article, because the activists described here use the term and see their cultural production in a political sense as both subordinate and counterhegemonic in relation to a wider, dominant cultural formation perceived as heteronormative and racist, holding on to the Gramscian insights associated with the concept in the work of the CCCS (Clarke et al, 1993(Clarke et al, [1976 that the fault lines thought to provoke conflict among apparently antagonistic cultural groups give way to new acts of citizenship and right to the city alliances based on shared interests.…”

“… The term subculture, developed separately in the context of the Chicago School of Sociology and in the context of the Birmingham‐based Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), has come under profound criticism within and beyond the disciplines of Cultural Studies and Sociology (Bennett, ; Blackman, ; Huq, ; Muggleton, ) for its alleged reification of cultural processes and its inability to capture the complexity of cultural agency. I nevertheless find it useful here for the purposes of this article, because the activists described here use the term and see their cultural production in a political sense as both subordinate and counterhegemonic in relation to a wider, dominant cultural formation perceived as heteronormative and racist, holding on to the Gramscian insights associated with the concept in the work of the CCCS (Clarke et al, [1976]). …”

Subculture Theory: An Historical and Contemporary Assessment of the Concept for Understanding Deviance

“…Two key areas where the CCCS theory has been criticised are its weak focus on gender and black and Asian youth cultures (McRobbie 1991, Huq 2006 Bell (2010) in his genealogical analysis of deviance and subculture. As with the growth of studies on young women we have seen the emergence of studies on black and Asian youth focused on both music and youth subculture including Gilroy (1987), Mac an Ghaill (1988), Jones (1988), Back (1996) and Owusu (2000).…”