Subcultures? Abused, Came About

Ken Gelder is one of those authors you can rely on for an entertaining pedagogical ride. Subcul- tures is no exception. The book is a welcome addition to volumes on subcultures appearing in the last few years, most of them far from entertaining. The backstory on the theory and GRAHAM ST JOHN analysis of ‘subculture’ provides students with an excellent understanding of how this heuristic, based around a term frequently used and subcultures? abused, came about. It will therefore be indispensable to students in senior level courses in sociology and cultural studies that deal directly with subculture. Though with some qualifica- tion. For, while the book offers an explanation of where ‘subculture’ has come from, and how it has evolved, it does not address why it should KEN GELDER be retained as a heuristic. That is, the chal- Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social lenges brought against subculture theory are Practice not squarely met or adequately negotiated in Routledge, London and New York, 2007 this short book. ISBN: 9780415379526 (PB), From the fascinating exploration of early 9780415379519 (HB) modern ‘roguery’, Elizabethan vagabonds RRP: £14.99 (PB), £55.00 (HB) and ‘organ-grinders’, to the sweeping accounts of figures seminal to the development of the Chicago School (for example, Park’s ‘moral milieu’, Albert Cohen’s ‘subcultural solution’, Thrasher’s ‘inturned’ gangs, to Howard Becker’s ‘deviants’, and John Irwin’s cosmopolitan ‘scenes’), from the archaeology of bar scenes and club cultures to investigations of literary (the Beats) and UK working-class subcultures (which provided the raw material for scholars at Birmingham’s Centre for Contemporary Cul- tural Studies), from jazz to hip-hop, from taxi dancers to hacker and other cyber subcultures, the book offers a cultural history of ‘subculture’ important for understanding the roots of the GRAHAM ST JOHN—SUBCULTURES? 217 heuristic and how it has been applied across romantic attention to everyday life, the heterogeneous social practice. From ‘New Age recognition that class may not always be a Travellers’ to kinky urban leather cults, Gelder determining factor, and the attention to lifestyle demonstrates his great penchant for teasing out and heterogeneity. This would have been insights in the comparison of diverse and the perfect opportunity to address one of the obscure material. key theoretical devices employed by post- The book performs this withering cultural subcultural critics, the concept of ‘neotribe’ history through its registering of six themes derived from French sociologist Michel listed early to account for all that has been Maffesoli as outlined in his The Time of the recognised as ‘subcultural’, and it offers con- Tribes. Most textbooks on youth cultures and vincing evidence for the persistence of these subcultures these days devote sections to themes, which are: their negative relation to ‘neotribes’, the comparison of structuralist and work; their ambivalent relation to class; their post-structuralist lenses fueling healthy debate association with territory rather than property; important, one would imagine, to the cultural their trajectory away from home and domes- history of subculture. Instead of, say, exploring ticity; their excessive character; and their consumer tribes and how they might evince refusal of the banal and the massified. It is the ‘sites of shared experiences, expressions of determined decoding of subcultures (and ‘sub- social distinction’, (106) or addressing the way culture’) scanned for evidence of these themes critical themes of network and fluidity chal- throughout literary, sociological and anthro- lenge subculture theory, this elision enables the pological accounts that I imagine inspired virtual dismissal of post-subculture theory as the book’s otherwise puzzlingly bland cover. too relativist and individualist, and in the Importantly, the book acknowledges how, process facilitates the retention of ‘subculture’ throughout its career, ‘subculture’ is a product as a heuristic device. Maffesoli and ‘tribes’ are of the empirical and the imaginary, revelatory hailed in one paragraph (135–6) of chapter and romantic representations produced in seven ‘Anachronistic Self Fashioning’, but this literary and sociological accounts. is far too little. That chapter smoothes over Where this document succeeds in offering a divergent heuristics through a discussion of kind of archaeology of ‘subculture’, excavating Geoff Mains’s work on urban leather sexuality and scanning its various substrata, it fails to and cultures (rather conveniently, Mains square up to recent interventions. There are appears to use the terms ‘subculture’ and ‘tribe’ two points I want to make here. The first relates interchangeably). It is true that Maffesoli has to what has been broadly referred to as ‘post- not had much to say about youth subcultures subculture’ theory. Gelder devotes some atten- in France or anywhere else, but the theory has tion to this debate in a section in chapter five been widely adopted. One of the key areas of where three critical points of departure from youth cultural activity in which Maffesolian subculture theory are discussed: the non- theory has been applied is dance culture, a not 218 VOLUME15 NUMBER1 MAR2009 insignificant development. Although Sub- example) and where social aesthetics con- cultures offers a cultural history of clubbing textualise the pursuit of wider causes. There studies in chapter three, this direction in post- appears to be much scope to draw attention rave research would have been useful to to race/ethnicity, queer and gender ‘identity address, since studies offer insights on the politics’ that crops up throughout the book intensely social (not exclusively individualistic) though unstated as such. Here subcultures are dimensions and trajectories of youth and con- performative contexts for causes other than sumer cultures. simply their own ‘ghettoised’ micro-social Secondly, although it goes unstated, Sub- reproduction. And the opportunity to discuss cultures is careful to retain the distinction the role of subculture in new religious and or between ‘subculture’ and ‘movement’ in social alternative spiritual movements (with specific analysis. This distinction remains loyal to the relation to paganism (136)) is quickly lost to an attentions of the majority of research through- analysis of kinky leathers cults. out the history of ‘subculture’. To consider how The final opportunity for this kind of the social formations under consideration as rapprochement was in the last chapter, on ‘subcultures’ might also possess ‘movement’ cyber-subcultures. Here is the only occasion identity would certainly have upset the para- anti-corporate (or alter-globalisation) activism meters set out early, and challenged the idea of (for instance in the form of ‘culture jamming’) subculture as this is typically known. But much attracts attention, but only insofar as it is sealed of the material drawn upon offers opportunity off in some kind of utopian apparatus articu- to address the role of ‘subcultures’ in identifi- lated via Hakim Bey’s registering of ‘a shadowy cations, histories, and mobilisations, beyond sort of counter-Net’. It is important to remem- the immediate associations in question, or in ber that Bey (aka Peter Lamborn Wilson) argued which these associations are implicated. For that the internet was a tool to facilitate instance, the hippies and other ‘countercultural’ the immediacy of the (off-line) ‘temporary agents discussed in chapter one surely enact a autonomous zone’ whose occupants are driven range of movement concerns, their associations by the desire for difference. In this final chapter, being communities of opposition as indeed activists are clocked, but only when they lurk made apparent by George McKay and Kevin in the virtual shadows of the internet. In any Hetherington, whose research is drawn upon. case, gestures of hacker and cyberpunk Studies of electronic dance music cultures defiance are swallowed up in a discussion of (clubs, raves, hip-hop, techno, and so on) offer ‘trolling’. Am I missing something here? If an opportunity to explore those moments when activism can be considered an appropriate ‘subcultures’ might become ‘movements’. Those theme to pursue when manifesting in on-line moments, for instance, when locales of identi- ‘communities’ and gestures, then why not off- fication and practices of belonging are subject line in the ‘meat’ space that has been the terrain to pressure (aesthetic, moral, legal, official, for of ‘subculture’ studies for most of its career? GRAHAM ST JOHN—SUBCULTURES? 219 Why will something subcultural not be found Without a final account to respond to one in difference-seeking social enclaves populated cannot adequately address whether the author by those responding to various lifeworld crises, isn’t clinging unnecessarily to this socio- and mobilising around concomitant causes? cultural unit of measurement. Though one Fair trade, global justice, ecological sustain- suspects he is. ability, and so on, are causes that both attract Subcultures is a faithful contribution to sub- and affirm micro- or subcultural networks— culture studies, offering an indispensable those, for instance, who gather at counter- account of how it came to be. This is not an summits, social forums, reclaimed sites, and enviable task, and Ken Gelder has skilfully other protest zones designed to reproduce pulled together complex literary, ethnographic, identity at the same time as they hail,

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