Iden Gebibee nk SroalA scwter Cots) Ae im Te Shetkuce Restor ' Collide , — Lew ? i chapter Introduction to part three Ken Gelder eeiole AT THE BIRMINGHAM CENTRE for Contem- porary Cultural Studies were more or less in agreement about what a subculture was, and what it does ~ emphasizing style, the ability to transform cultural objects or to borrow from other places and other times, the engagement in ritualistic or symbolic modes of ‘resistance’, and the ambivalent structural relations a subculture bears to the working-class ‘parent culture’ and the less class-bound realm of mass culture. Class has not been the oniy social referent for the COCSs work, of course: Angela McRobbie and Jenny Garber ave explored issues af gender and subcultural identification, and Hetdige has related subcultural formations to ethnicity and migra: tion, Subsequent commentators have introduced different kinds of configurations into the subcultural mix, however, in some cases ing extensive critiques of the CCCS’s methodologies ar by authors in this Part mptions. The main criticisms ma jolve the CCCS's over-privileging of spectacular styles, its one- al view of ‘resistance’ and ‘int of Willis) its eefusal to engac orporation more concrete! houltures as distinctive arrangements of everyila tL they acta’ 5 if they were hamauineas, as if146 their ‘provleins’ were shared equally atonyst the participant There interest, in other words, the internat stratines ticas of a subculture. Moreover, the emphasis on resistance’ te to a dows playing of subcultural participation in commerce, in the processes of purchase and exchange - important in the actua formation of subcultural styles. The chapters by Stanley Cohen and Gary Clarke each engage directly with the CCCS’s work. Cohen’s classic book Folk Devil and Moral Panics (1972; 1980) had examined the various ways in which disruptive subcultures are created by mass media and received in society ~ hysterically, as a form of entertainment, nostal gically, and so on. His introduction to the new edition is an appeal for the return to sociology in subcultural analysis, a discipline whict is less caught up with the obfuscations of contemporary Continental theory and which stresses the importance of rigorous methods of research. Cohen turns to the ordinariness of subcultural life, rejecting the Birmingham Centre’s tendency to privilege spectacu larity and resistance. Indeed, for Cohen, subcultures have more to do with how one gets by in the present moment, with apathy, passivity, conformity and the more mundane ‘daily round of life’, rather than with their relations to the broader structures of class, capitalism, and so on, Cohen’s view of subcultural forma tions not as a single, over-determined response to particular conditions but as one kind of response amongst others certain moves towards @ much-needed demystification of the subcultural ‘image’. Importantly, Cohen also calls for a method of analysis which involves actually talking to subcultural participants ~ h values Paul Willis in this context, as an ethnographer rather than 4 a semiotician Gary Clarke’s contribution, taken from a lo published as a working paper at Birmingham, is a critique of Hebdige’s division of spectacular subcultuyes—those with ‘style’ from an undifferentiated ‘general publi yle is dissociated fr: mass culture; or, if they are brought togétNer-Tt is at the expense of a certain level of contempt for the latter (more pronounced in Hebdige than in John Clarke ef af.), In fact, mass cultural styles 's of transformation, recontextual nger article may also engage with p ization and so on, processes which Hebdige had only attributed toINTRODUCTION TO PART THREE subcultures, Hebdige tended to treat subcultures as authentic, original and vulnerable to incorporation into mass cultural production but Clarke argues that a more developed sense of the interaction between subcultures and mass cultural forms would easily problematize this kind of trajectory. The chapters by Jon Stratton and Simon Frith emphasize not Swsistance’ but conventionafity in subcultural identification. Stratton investigates the transferability of subcultures from one place to another. For the CCCS analysts, subcultures more or less remained in place and were often short-lived. But some subcultures Stratton’s examples are surfies and bikers ~ are more long- lasting, self-contained and self-generating, not least because they are less constrained by location and class. But they cannot be conceived of in terms of ‘resistance’ since they live out consumerist ambitions (the American Dream’ or ‘a myth of leisure’, for example), albeit in an ‘alternative way’. It is not that these subcul- tures will eventually be ‘incorporated’ either, since they are already in a relationship with the commodificatory processes of dominant culture, which, indeed, brought them into being in the first place. Simon Frith looks at two prevailing views of music culture: the vealist’ view, which values ‘authenticity’ and small-scale levels of production, locating this as ‘anti-establishment’, as innovatory, and So on; and the ‘formalist’ view, which stresses the influence of conventions, seeing music (small-scale or otherwise) as a form in the frame of an inherited, determining set of which unfolds wit constraints. Punk tends to be characterized in the former way, while disco is often considered from the iatter perspective. For her 's alignment to e Frith music can itself ‘articulate’ an audienc of these positions — but that alignment will in turn determine music’s leological effects. All this is enacted in the fie d of leisure, which folds under the constraints of conventions, such as ‘enter: ent’, This may signi ly curtail a subculture’s capacity to The chapters by McRobbie and Thornton investigate t mies of subcultures ~ again, to produce accounts that mov the concept of ‘resistance’, McRobbie looks at subcultural k 6 ying and selling’ in the marketKEN GELDER relation to the Birmingham tradition is not surprisingly ambiva- lent (she was a graduate student at the CCCS): she returns subcultural analysis to the field of sociology and everyday life, but she also touches the kind of romantic narrative found in Hebdige involving the capacity of subcultures to precipitate change in ‘contemporary consumer culture from below’. In particular, her juxtaposition of the ‘enterprise culture’ of subcultures with the fashion ‘designer’ recalls Hebdige’s use of the Levi-Straussian distinction between the ‘bricoleur’ and the ‘engineer’. Thornton departs more radically from CCCS_ paradigms, replacing their politicization of youth with an account of the micro- politics of the cluster of overlapping subcultures that British youth call ‘club cultures’. She develops the notion of ‘subcultural capital’, drawing on Pierre Bourdieu (for ‘distinction’) and turning back to [ the Chicago School (for 'status’) to investigate social conflicts and cultural competition within subcultures. These may be built around hierarchies of taste Br-Kriowledse, or access to certain locations “and events. Sabcuitural capital“is accumulat ve: Sc sccumulative: some people have