ANTHROPOLOGY

Anthropology

Anthropology

Explain and discuss with examples the relationship between style and subcultures

The study of sub-culture has been appropriated as an object of investigation by cultural historians since the late 19th Century. The Chicago School was founded in 1892 and was the earliest department of sociology in the United States, which conducted investigations into crime and deviance within urban groups. This was followed by The Frankfurt School in 1923 who also conducted studies into the behaviour of urban groups that demonstrated a loss of authentic working-class culture. The Frankfurt School gathered Marxist theorists who severely opposed capitalism and its affect on society and as a result were interested in behaviour that resisted dominant cultural forms. Studies, investigations and definitions of  sub-culture continued to develop during the 20th and 21st Centuries. Cultural historian, Miles Gordon states:

"One of the functions of any science, 'natural' or 'social' is admittedly to discover and isolate increasingly smaller units of subject matter."   (1947, in Gelder & Thorton, 1997, pg.40)

In other words, he is explaining that it is easier to understand the behaviour of certain groups in society if aspects of sub-cultural groups are investigated and understood, resulting in a more coherent understanding of society as a whole . A problematic aspect of Gordon's work is that he believes that children are born into a particular sub-culture and then become 'deviant' by not conforming to the expectations of that particular group. It would be more accurate to state how children are born into a 'dominant' culture and then become 'deviant' by adopting the morals and values of a particular sub-culture. The sub-culture that Gordon is referring to here is inevitably determined by class and race, whereas the sub-cultures that will be looked at during this essay are predominately determined by style.

Dick Hebdige was also one of the pioneers of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies and his book, Sub-Culture: The Meaning of style (1979) has been hugely influential to the study and understanding of subcultures. Hebdige refers to sub-cultural groups such as the 'Teddy Boys', 'Mods', 'Rockers', 'Skinheads' and 'Punks' as groups who 'are alternately dismissed, denounced and canonised and treated, at different times, as threats to public order.' (1979, pg. 2) Hebdige underlines some key points that have been the focus of study for cultural historians, for example; the use and appropriation of 'mundane objects' that come to signify greater meanings within sub-cultural group. The safety pin was an object that was appropriated by the Punks in a similar way to which the Lambretta motor scooter was a symbol of being a Mod. The Lambretta scooter was designed and produced as a cheap, convenient mode of transport for the Italian working classes but when appropriated by the 'mod' sub-culture, it took on a whole new set of values and meanings. Objects such as these became 'tokens of a self imposed exile.'

Hebdige writes:

"The tensions between dominant and subordinate groups can be found reflected in the surfaces of sub-culture - in the styles made up of mundane objects which ...