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Youth Subculture and Modern Society Journal of Critical Reviews ISSN- 2394-5125 Vol 7, Issue 13, 2020 YOUTH SUBCULTURE AND MODERN SOCIETY Nina Aleksandrovna Oparina1, Irina Sergeevna Kazakova2, Yury Viktorovich Abramov3, Nikolai Ivanovich Shapovalov3, Viktor Anatolievich Ilyin4 1Institute of Culture and Arts, Maria Ulyanova Street, 21, Moscow, 119331, Russia 2Russian State Social University, Wilhelm Pieck Street, 4/5, Moscow, 129226, Russia 3K.G. Razumovsky Moscow State University of Technologies and Management (The First Cossack University), Zemlyanoi Val Street, 73, Moscow, 109004, Russia 4College of the Russian State Social University, Losinostrovskaya Street, 40, Moscow, 107150, Russia *E-mail: [email protected] Received: 11.04.2020 Revised: 12.05.2020 Accepted: 08.06.2020 Abstract For 50 years, youth culture has been a symbol of rebellion and expression of the spirit of youth and change. It is characterized by the diversity of forms, genres, and behavioral rules, transforming into a complex symbolic system, which complicates the study of this sociocultural phenomenon. The goal of the work is to assess youth subcultures of the 2000s in terms of their significance for modern Russian society and its current state. Conclusions: Subcultures based on rock music accumulate countercultural features as a reaction of youth to the general crisis of the Russian culture, in particular, the dominance of the entertaining component as an element distracting from reality. Keywords: youth, subculture, society, reaction, crisis, rock music. © 2020 by Advance Scientific Research. This is an open-access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.31838/jcr.07.13.63 INTRODUCTION certain social practices and their choice of lifestyle. This scientific In the sociological study of the phenomenon of youth culture, the approach allows considering the formation of each person’s interchangeable concepts of subculture and lifestyle are often needs, interests, goals, and value orientations directly dependent used [1]. The British sociologist M. Brake defines youth culture as on their conscious involvement in the context of a subculture. “a special form of the organization of the activities of the youth, a relatively autonomous and comprehensive formation within a The cultural-analytical sociological approach to youth cultural tradition dominant in the society, different in its norms, subcultures suggests that for the study of social reality, it is values, institutes, lifestyle, and thinking” [2, p. 204]. According to necessary to consider the cognitive structures of the everyday Brake, most youth subcultures are collective deviations but the interaction between individuals and their verbal behavior, nature of these deviations from social norm ranges from political expressing meaningful aspects of the typical behavior of the protest to artistic circles. There is no value unity in youth culture. participants to the interaction. According to this thesis, the Demonstrating a certain style of behavior, clothing, slang, and formation of youth subcultures can be interpreted using the music preference, young people express their adherence to a analysis of representations, based on which they model their subculture [3]. E.G. Slutskiy defines lifestyle as a type of behavior behavior. Sociologists studying contemporary youth culture note and consciousness of a person, which is determined not by that the commonality of individual preferences further historical, constant types of activity but by situational, in encourages the formation of group lifestyles. Unlike subcultures, temporal terms, conditions of being and their reflection in they are situational and depend not on reemerging original people’s consciousness [4]. group values and behavioral stereotypes but the qualitative component of the real conditions of the cultural system’s In terms of the substance of the contemporary culture of Russian functioning. society, it comprises several mutually exclusive and, at the same time, coexisting cultural strata. E.L. Omelchenko describes them The sociocultural environment, in which modern Russian youth as four subcultural subsystems: the high intellectual subculture perform their creative activity, is characterized by highly of the elite; traditions of the Soviet culture of the older contradictory value spectrum. This makes young people aim generation; the subculture of liberal values, including some of the their innovative potential not at the creation of new subcultural youth, entrepreneurs, and intelligentsia; a complex of marginal models but at the adaptation to the already existing ones. “The subcultures of the lower class with “trench” psychology [5, p. phenomena of the non-academic music culture comprise a 106]. Based on V.A. Lukov’s classification, the following youth special field: film score and jazz, musical and rock music. Their formations are active: 1) associated with criminal subcultures, 2) introduction to the variety of the 20th-century musical influenced by Western trends, 3) romanticized compensators of phenomena seems important for the new Russia” [8, p. 101]. everyday life, and 4) recreating certain features of the Soviet past Young people seek a cultural niche, identification with which [6, p. 80]. allows them to occupy a stable social position. Thus, the image of modern youth culture is quite diverse. Choosing a subculture, young people rely on personal knowledge while noticing the differences in subjective meanings, which In foreign literature, youth subcultures are considered primarily hinder the achievement of their common practical goal. Here, the in terms of adherence to certain groups, including criminal principle of the reciprocity of perspectives is observed, or “the circles [9]. Thus, H. Shin investigates the key concept of interchangeability of points of view and the coincidence of subculture and concludes that “the pure energy engendered by systems of relevance, the assumption that another also considers the subculture and the ironic relation between subculture and and sees objects with the same typicality” [7, p. 131]. A. Schütz urban transformation in both local and translocal scales” [10]. studied the cognitive mechanism of introduction of a person to Among recent works, of particular interest is the study by L. Journal of critical reviews 363 YOUTH SUBCULTURE AND MODERN SOCIETY Fatsis who seeks to “reintroduce Black urban musical rest, as defined by T. Adorno, experience the stultifying effect. subcultures as valuable forms of creativity and public expression Pop music, despite apparent diversity, forms their musical in an attempt to resist, criticize and expose their criminalization horizons, imposing musical cliches. by the London Metropolitan Police” [11, p. 447]. As evidenced by the presented data, the modern musical METHODS environment becomes a factor in the consolidation of the youth To describe subcultures, emerging under the influence of music but due to its discreteness, it causes varying adaptive reactions in preferences of the youth, in 2018-2019, we conducted a survey creative self-realization. Thus, pop rockers promote the (interview) of young men and women, living in different parts of postmodernist mixing of genres, techno fans find a new Moscow and the Moscow region – both at the locations of psychedelic world in computer music, and rappers demonstrate educational institutions of various levels and activity of teenage teenage nonconformity. The lost meaningful core is considered music fan groups. The age of the surveyed was 13-17 years. Most by the majority of rock communities. The disconnection between of the respondents were high school students (83.7%), others – youth subcultures is caused by the desire to defend one’s cultural college and vocational school freshmen (16.3%). The average age values against the endless appropriation by the pop industry. of the surveyed was 15.7 years. According to earlier research Thus, in the nearest future, one should not expect the emergence data [5, 6, 13], the most numerous among teenagers were fans of of new youth music subcultures; the process of their pop music, rock, techno, rap, and other music genres [13, pp. conservation is taking place. 102–104]. In 2019, we conducted and processed 107 interviews. In accordance with socialization, youth culture directly reflects All answers of the respondents were considered. the values, worldview orientations, and behavioral stereotypes of The topic of the survey was determined by the respondents’ society. Due to the psychophysical reasons associated with youth, experiences of attending discotheques, popular among the youth. the new generation strives for self-realization and innovation 43% of the surveyed attended them every week. Apart from search, which often leads to the rejection of traditional norms clubs (attended by 32.6%), the main organizers of discotheques and values. This is the field of countercultural practice, which are schools (51.2%). Their repertoire, according to the takes various forms in the youth environment: from football fans respondents, reflects the following proportion: disco (58.1%), to fans of aggressive music genres. According to the specialist in techno (51%), rock (32.6%), pop (25.6%), rap (20.9%). This youth culture E.L. Omelchenko, “in the Russian context, pop reflects the meaningful component of the repertoire of music becomes the junction of the youth mainstream and discotheques in Moscow and the Moscow region, based on a list dominating political and cultural
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