MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Postsubcultural theory, a more recent school of thought in the study of youth cultures, grew in popularity in the late 90s and early 2000s as a response to the Birmingham School’s Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies’ assumptions of subcultures. The Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), a school of thought that arose from the UK after World War II, argued that youth cultures were male-dominated and largely the result of class inequalities. In looking at today’s youth cultures, the characteristics presented by subcultural theorists are no longer the norm and subcultures are no longer seen as phenomena based entirely on class and gender. As a response, postsubcultural theory argues that contemporary subcultures are multi-faceted and diverse, and no longer meet the definition set forth by the Birmingham School. Furthermore, postsubcultural theory seeks to understand “how we might retheorize and reconceptualize youth (sub)cultural phenomena on the shifting social terrain of the new millennium, where global mainstreams and local substreams rearticulate and restructure in complex and uneven ways to produce new, hybrid cultural constellations” (Weinzierl & Muggleton, 2003).

Using today’s current punk rock subculture as evidence, this presentation will explore the findings of fifteen interviews with members of the punk rock community. These interviews were conducted between May 29, 2015 and November 25, 2015 and were conducted with a variety of participants within the community (fans, blog editors, band members, etc.). Excerpts from interviews will support the postsubcultural notion that today’s subcultures are not necessarily working class responses to the status quo, but instead, this subculture relies on its own set of norms and values that align more closely with the assumptions of postsubcultural theorists. Common themes across these interviews will be presented to support the notion that this particular community does, in fact, fit many of the characteristics of a postsubculture.