Acta Sociologica

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Late-modern hipsters: new tendencies in popular culture

Bjørn Schiermer
Acta Sociologica published online 8 October 2013
DOI: 10.1177/0001699313498263

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Article
Acta Sociologica
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Late-modern hipsters: New ª The Author(s) 2013
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tendencies in popular culture DOI: 10.1177/0001699313498263
asj.sagepub.com

Bjørn Schiermer
University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Abstract
The article deals with the cultural significance of a new figure in late-modern Western culture:
the hipster. The current hipster culture, so I argue, can be used as a magnifying glass that makes
impending changes to our conception of culture and of cultural development visible. It ushers in
broader cultural and social changes: different relations among generations, new ways of relating
to technology and media, new ways of being together, and new phenomenologies and sensibil-
ities. After a first outline of the figure of the hipster, I mark out two salient traits to hipster
culture: its redemptive gesture toward the objects of the recent past and its predilection for
irony. The article seeks to unfold hipster culture and sociality in an ongoing dialogue with
sociological theory in general and conventional ways of thinking subculture in particular.

Keywords
authenticity, generations, hipster, imitation, individualization, irony, nostalgia, retro, subculture

Manoah Finston: But in a way, you could argue then that the hipster culture is doing a great service to world
culture at large, because people are safeguarding the authenticity of the generation before their own. [ . . . ].
And I’m wondering whether this commitment to protecting the authenticity of experiences from a gener-
ation before – like the Tiger Beat posters and Scott Baio and all this stuff – isn’t useful or productive. And I
want to argue that it goes against what I think is the usual stigma of hipster culture [ . . . ]. So maybe if you
look at hipster culture as this positive protective force, then maybe that is the ultimate merit of hipster cul-
ture. So I ask you and anyone else in the room, do you think that therein lies the sort of positive structure
and dynamic of hipster culture?
[Silence from the Panel]
A Lorentzen: Do you guys want to respond to the question?
Grief: I would like to put that to the audience. Surely there’s a positive account . . . I mean that’s a very
compelling positive account of hipsterism.
Brian Gallagher: Yeah, but why? It is crap that’s being remembered [ . . . ] (Grief et al., 2010: 52–53).

Corresponding Author:
Bjørn Schiermer, University of Copenhagen, Øster Farimagsgade 5, bld. 16, Copenhagen, DK-1014 K, Denmark.
Email: bsa@sociology.ku.dk

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2 Acta Sociologica

Introduction
The above exchange of opinions stems from a symposium on hipster culture held on 11 April 2009 in
New York organized by New York-based journalist Mark Grief. Grief is the founder of the New York
magazine ‘N þ 1’ and is an editor and main contributor to one of the more serious investigations into
hipster culture: What was the hipster? A sociological investigation (Grief et al., 2010). The awkward
silence from the panel is telling. The idea of a youth culture intensively devoted to redeeming the objects
of the former generation or ‘preserving’ its ‘experiences’ does not fit well with traditional subcultural
templates. Neither does it resonate well with the exclusively negative tenor of the essays and viewpoints
assembled in Grief’s book. In fact, Finston’s observations present the only positive assessment of hipster
culture in the entire book; thus it is no surprise that nobody on the podium knows how to deal with them.
They are neither re-addressed in the ensuing discussion nor in the papers presented in the other half of the
book reflecting the debate at distance.
It is the thesis of this article that an investigation into hipsterdom yields insights into profound cultural
changes yet to come – but that traditional subcultural vocabulary is bound to ignore these changes. In
short, the traditional sociological focus on ‘rebellious youth’, on alternative ‘ways of life’ carrying
broader emancipative potentials, or on a critique of capitalism is doomed to fail in the case of the hipster.
Polemically speaking, this quest for critical potential may only see a lack of resistance or demarcation
and thus only access what is really new about the hipster negatively: What may be a sound conservatism
is interpreted as a lack of protest.
Luckily for the panel, the artefacts mentioned by Finston – old sitcoms with Scott Baio or early fan-
posters from the adolescent girl’s pop-magazine Tiger Beat – are no doubt objects of ironic consump-
tion among the hipsters and thus dismissible as indications of a serious redemptive effort. But what if
focus had been placed instead on the predilection among hipsters for the vinyl LPs discarded and
betrayed by Grief and Gallagher’s own generation, on the redemption of precious soul recordings from
the fifties, dresses or designs from the sixties or on the love for the Polaroid aesthetics of the seventies?
Indeed, in contrast to traditional subculture, hipster culture is characterized by a lack of generational
distinction and by a genuine veneration of certain cultural expressions and objects of the previous gen-
erations. This positive aspect, so I will argue, characterizes one of the most interesting facts about cur-
rent hipster culture. It points at broader cultural changes; not just to a different understanding of
generational change, but also to new ways of relating to technology and media. This article, then,
is about hipster culture. It is about the cultural changes that can be observed when the hipster figure
is used as a focal point – and it is about the kind of theoretical concepts that are needed to unfold these
changes.
There is another reason, however, behind this article: the neglect of the hipster phenomenon on the
part of academic sociology. This lack of interest contrasts glaringly with the enormous amount of atten-
tion devoted to the hipster phenomenon outside academia. There exists an immense quantity of opinions
and observations on the hipster phenomenon made by journalists, bloggers and layman experts of all
categories. The entry ‘hipster’ yields 75 million hits on Google – and thus exceeds the entry ‘sociology’
(73 million). The Internet, the tabloids and the magazines are full of more or less serious attempts at
describing hipster culture. The hipster category is also an object of serious interest for prominent finan-
cial magazines such as Fortune and The Wall Street Journal, and, rather tellingly, the closest we get to
a ‘real’ sociological interest has surfaced in the area of sociological consumption research.1 Hipster
culture has been sadly neglected by the sociologists of culture. Grief, the journalist, even explicitly
regrets this lack of authoritative sociological guidance (Grief et al., 2010: xiv–xv).
This article presents a first attempt to overcome this lacuna. After some preliminary conceptual deli-
mitations and definitions, I introduce the main outline – the hipster figure. Thereupon, I focus more
closely on what I take to be the two salient traits of hipster culture: irony and redemptive conservatism.
Finally, I discuss hipster culture in relation to the current critique of the traditional concept of subculture
and theorize on the general significance of the phenomenon of hipster culture.

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Schiermer: Late-modern hipsters: New tendencies in popular culture 3

Empirically, I resort to a broad collection of layman ‘handbooks’ to hipster culture (Aiello (2003),
Erhlich and Bartz (2010), Getty (2012), Grief et al. (2010), Jefferson (2010), Kinzey (2012), Lanham
(2002), Mande (2010), Weingarten (2011)). Additionally, I use auto-ethnographic observations, photo-
graphic documentation and borrow interview data from unpublished empirical work. However, I lay no
claims to a methodologically conducted gathering of qualitative data; rather, I selectively focus from the
outset on the crucial polarization between irony and redemption in hipster culture. This is new sociolo-
gical territory and needs (new) theoretical grounding. The investigation into the two main traits to hipster
culture mirrors, I hope to show, the accentuation of the conflict between individualization and imitation
in late modern culture.

Demarcations and definitions

Before I move on to the actual investigation of the hipster figure, I shall circumscribe my usage of two
theoretical concepts.
The first of these is the concept of imitation. Since I have dealt extensively with this concept else-
where (Schiermer, 2009, 2011), I restrict myself to marking out a few guiding posts. I define imitation
as doing what others do exclusively – but unwittingly – for the sake of doing what others do. When we
reproach ourselves or others for taking over this or that object for reasons of ‘mere’ fashion, we put this
definition to use. We attribute inherent powers to the social, powers that determine tastes, practices and
object choices of the individual behind his back. All the time, through unconscious participation in forms
of collective imitation, the collective ‘selects’ or converges on certain objects (Blumer, 1969).
The second concept is the concept of authenticity. I shall simply point out that a growing number of
cultural areas, institutions and practices promote and require forms of self-expression. These cultural
realms are circumscribed by language games in which notions such as the ‘cliche’, the ‘stereotypical’
and the ‘merely’ fashionable, but also of ‘personality’ and authenticity, play a crucial role. In short:
Creative behaviour is authentic if it is not reducible to imitation.2
This rather traditional perspective on authenticity stands in contrast to more ‘sociologizing’ or con-
structivist approaches. In my view, authenticity is not a question of mere subcultural ‘rhetoric’, nor is it
simply a value ascribed to certain objects, musical styles or type of events (the black rapper with ‘street
credit’, the authentic ‘rave’ ambience) standing at the centre of a certain subculture (Harkness, 2012;
Thornton, 1995), nor is it reducible to a form of ideology of creative ‘self-realization’ flourishing on the
late-modern Western labour market (or in contemporary management ideology). But neither is authen-
ticity to be reduced to a somewhat abstract goal for the individual of realizing her ‘self’ in her journey
through life or of securing a consistent ‘biography’ (Giddens, 1991; Taylor, 1991).
A quest for authenticity is laid upon us every time we engage in forms of personal creative practice. It
is necessary to reintegrate the concept of authenticity now relegated to the aesthetical sphere in the
everyday. A claim to individuality and authentic self-expression governs a still larger part of our most
implicit ‘front stage work’ (Goffman, 1959). I will return to the opposition between imitation and
(authentic) individuality underlying my analysis after a short characterization of the hipster figure.

Hipster culture: A preliminary sketch

The hipster category arose in the late 1940s. Originally, it was a term for the decadent connoisseurism
and over-refinement of late black jazz culture captured in a famous essay by American literary critic
Anatole Broyard (1948). Later the term was used in Norman Mailor’s The White Negro from 1957, now
describing a white predilection for black (jazz) culture. There is no agreement on how the term has
passed from that context to the current one, yet certain themes resonate: There is a definite moment
of snobbery in hipster culture. Hipsters are collectors and connoisseurs (Grief et al., 2010: 8). Hipster
culture belongs to times or contexts of (popular) cultural decadence or fatigue; times in which ‘used
up’ or saturated cultural forms proliferate and authenticity has to be found in places where no one else
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4 Acta Sociologica

looks. Yet, instead of cultivating a certain cultural expression or genre – jazz – as the original hipsters
did, the current hipster is eclectic and broad-minded. His quest for the authentic or the ironic covers the
whole spectrum of popular cultural forms belonging to the recent past.
As to contemporary hipster culture, the handbooks all agree on the following characteristics: Hipsters
are young, white and middle class, typically between 20 and 35 years old. They contribute to the
‘gentrification’ of former ‘popular’, working-class, ethnic or ‘exotic’ neighbourhoods in the big Western
cities.3 The original hipster breeding ground is Williamsburg in New York from where hipster culture
has spread to all major Western cities. Also in a Scandinavian setting the hipster is a known public
figure: In Copenhagen the hipsters gather in Vesterbro and Nørrebro; in Stockholm, Södermalm; in Oslo,
Youngstorget and Grünerløkka. Hipsters generally vote to the left, typically study at the humanities or
work in the ‘creative industry’ or in cafés or bars or music or fashion stores. Grief et al. deliver the
following description:

Trucker hats, undershirts called ‘wifebeaters’, worn as outwear, the aesthetic of basement rec-room porno-
graphy, flash-lit Polaroids, fake wood panelling, Papst Blue ribbon; ‘porno’ or ‘pedofile’ moustaches; aviator
glasses, American T-shirts for church socials, et cetera; tube socks, the late albums of Johnny Cash produced
by Rick Rubin; and tattoos, Vice magazine [ . . . ]; American Apparel, the socially conscious, jersey-knit-
pyjamas-as-clothing, basement-pornographic boutique chain [ . . . ]. (2010: 11)

I shall leave aside why Grief thinks paedophiles wear moustaches. His allusions to 1970s porno-
graphic films do catch the cheap, stingy and gaudy aspects to the hipster aesthetic. They point at the
ironic aspect of hipster behaviour. The following observation is taken from the book Look at this f *cking
hipster, by New York-based blogger and comic Joe Mande:

Everything they do is ironic: from the clothes they wear to the TV-shows they watch, to the stupid facial hair
they grow – it’s all an endless joke. There is no substance behind any of it. Hipsters rebel against a shallow,
materialistic, directionless society by being shallow, materialistic and directionless. (2010: 12)

Mande is not alone in his negative view of hipster culture. The first words that come to mind when
one turns over the pages of these layman books are distance and animosity. The hipster is not a well-liked
figure. The emotions he calls forth range from a form of warm irony (Lanham, 2002) to outright enmity
(Ehrlich and Bartz, 2010; Mande, 2010). Some of these books present themselves as mildly humorous
‘tourist guides’ to hipster ‘land’; others exploit the fashion excesses of hipster culture through ample use
of illustrative photos of hipster ‘types’ (Weingarten, 2011; Getty, 2012). Some emulate, humorously or
not, scientific vocabularies belonging to the ethnological idiom (Aiello, 2003; Ehrlich and Bartz, 2010);
yet others attempt a predominantly political (Marxist) or more theoretical approach (Kinzey, 2012; Grief
et al., 2010). No guidebook misses marvelling – somewhat self-complacently – at the obvious uniformity
of the ‘individualized’ hipster culture.
Apparently, this animosity toward the hipster category is not restricted to the avowed enemies of hipster
culture. No hipster handbook forgets to mention that even the hipsters themselves dismiss their proper
belonging to the category, hurt by all categorizations implying the existence of imitative behaviour. No
hipster has written proudly about his culture proper. He might take himself seriously – not ‘hipster culture’.
The hipster has no cause; hipster culture possesses no manifestos (but an enormous number of manifestos
against it); it has no instituted leaders; it has no clear borders; it is more inclusive and less uniform than the
traditional subculture; it does not promote drug-use; it does not battle the police or the authorities; it does
not market itself discursively as a distinct alternative or rebellious lifestyle – thus, finally, it does not try to
settle issues with the previous generation. In short, hipster culture is no ‘real’ subculture.
And yet, the handbooks circumscribe with all due precision the objects demarcating hipster culture,
the ideologies that circulate, the forms of social interaction and the precise places to gawk at them. How
can this be? How is unity ensured in a thoroughly individualized subculture?
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Schiermer: Late-modern hipsters: New tendencies in popular culture 5

Individuality and imitation

The point of departure for my analysis is the ongoing sharpening of the opposition between individuality
and imitation in modern culture. Hipster culture is the living demonstration of this accentuation: The
‘average hipster thrives’, we read, on being ‘quirky’, ‘unique’ and – ‘to the majority of society’ – ‘fuck-
ing weird [ . . . ]’ (Ehrlich and Bartz, 2010: 105).
The figure of the nerd or the ‘loner’ so important in hipster culture (Lanham, 2002: 32–34) illus-
trates how this paradox is acted out in practice. The celebration of the nerd look in hipster culture –
think about the ‘nerd’ from the American youth movies of the eighties, a bit too clever for his sur-
roundings and with enormous glasses – is anything but coincidental. The nerd is the paradigma of
an authentic personality: He cannot adjust even if he wants to. However, what used to be his stigma – his
social indisposition, his awkwardness – has changed into a mark of honour. Only the nerd or the idiosyn-
cratic person is truly individual. And yet the nerd figure now exists as a circumscribed type in the hipster
gallery of styles.
A quick gaze on the use of tattoos in hipster culture is equally instructive. Overtly fashionable cur-
rents and cliches have to be avoided; first and foremost tattoos carrying Japanese or Chinese characters
or (for women) tribal ornaments on the lower back. However, the gamut of possible motifs is not only
much broader than in traditional subculture, it is also way more individualized. The hipster tattoo can
thus be many things – childish, funny, sketchy, casual, surreal, ugly; often strongly idiosyncratic – but
it can never be intentionally uniform: ‘Hipsters prefer to design their own [tattoo]’ (Lanham, 2002: 63).
Or, if uniform or cliche, then with irony or distance: ‘a kitschy sailor-style tattoo’ (ibid.). Evidently,
the extreme consciousness of the imitational aspects of social life makes it still harder to live up to the
requirement of authentic expression – and thus forces the individual into the negative or reflective, the
sheer auto-distancing from the inauthentic; that is, into the ironic.

Irony
Among Scandinavian sociologists the concept of irony was relatively early touched upon in connec-
tion with the distanced and playful relation to gender identities in mainstream youth culture (Vikkleven,
1993; Nielsen and Rudberg, 1995) or as a normal practice or ‘strategy’ in youth consumption of popular
media and cultural industrial products (Fornäs, 1995; Povlsen, 1996). However, these accounts do not really
investigate into the phenomenological aspects related to ironic consumption. On the other hand, in the cano-
nical investigations into the phenomenology of ironic objects and ‘sensibilities’ – I am thinking notably
about Susan Sontag’s famous ‘Notes on ‘‘camp’’’ (1999) – the social dimension is thoroughly neglected.
Irony, however, does not simply express a certain negative, disillusioned relation to the world felt by the
lonely and melancholic philosopher. And irony is definitively not – as Kierkegaard used to think – an exis-
tential remedy to withdraw unnoticed from the social in the goal of being alone with God. Lonely is the
ironist that is constantly taken seriously. Irony is first and foremost a way of being together; a powerful but
hazardous tool used in concrete social interaction. The successful understanding of an ironic remark creates
instant social bonds, whereas mistaken irony often creates embarrassing and awkward situations.
Here I shall focus on irony as a form of collective enjoyment of ‘failed’ objects. The following inter-
view4 excerpt illustrates this aspect. The interviewees are discussing a bar or a nightclub known for its
hipster clientele in Copenhagen:

Anne: But when you look at the bartenders; I mean, you see that they are completely type cast to work there; it
is the inversed version of the Joe and The Juice.

[...]
Anne: And they are too cool for themselves; I think it’s so funny; and it has almost become even worse . . .
[...]
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6 Acta Sociologica

Emma: Joe and The Juice5 with hangovers.

Anne: Joe and The Juice with a hangover, and then a bit more bear-in-the-hand like
Emma: he, he [laughing]
Anne: The whole thing has turned, you know, rock‘n’roll hipster style; there is a fair amount of people, who
have grown a beard, and then they hang around in their wife-beaters and with their tattoos, and there is this
guy; he looks completely like the old seaman [‘skipper’]; he has, like, reddish hair and then he has this huge
full beard and a small knitted hat, and stands there in his stripy undershirt and so . . .
Emma: yeah . . . .
Interviewer: What about the type who comes here regularly? Can you describe him or her?

Anne: I think, you see a lot of guys here, who, in spite of the heat, hang around in their leather jackets, you
know, downstairs in the cellar smoking their fags; I think you see a whole lot of rock‘n’roll guys in their tight
jeans and leather boots or something like that . . .
[...]
Anne: That’s what the young people want!

[...]
Mikkel: Ehh, but, it is this rock‘n’roll hipster grey area, right . . .
Interviewer: What does that look like?

Mikkel: yep, he, he, take a look at Anne . . .

[Shared laughter]
Anne: Rock‘n’roll hipster, that is me, he, he

[laughter] . . .

We see how the gulf between a form of ‘front stage work’ bearing on the personal and the authen-
tic on the one hand, and, on the other, collective imitational currents undermining this claim, engenders
irony. The type depicted by the interviewees is not sufficiently individual in his object choices, but,
apparently, throws himself at this or that particular trend in spite of obvious practical or functional cri-
teria. In reality it is this moment of excess and seduction that irony investigates. The conversation among
the interviewees shows how irony permits a shared ‘mimetic’ endeavour; a ‘cold’ form of object ‘empa-
thy’, a form of being together around an intimate, accurate, detailed and playful contouring of all the
facets and features of the particular object or social ‘type’ under ironic scrutiny – seeking out and piling
up all its exhorted features. Irony, when at its best, is a collective and intellectual exercise.
This brings us to the hipster predilection for traditional kitsch: Is such irony a form of symbolic vio-
lence denigrating the culture of other and inferior positions in social space in the goal of maintaining the
superior value of the position proper? Does it ‘naturalize’ established hierarchies of culture and cultural
expressions? Since the prejudices concerning the social use and function of irony often seem to block for
an open-minded approach to hipster culture altogether – as is more than evident from the handbooks –
I treat these issues with a certain care. In short, my idea is that we can put some of the animosity against
hipster culture (and ironic ‘appreciation’ in general) to rest, if we remain focused on irony as a reaction to
overt but unconscious imitation.
As already intimated, a certain hipster ‘type’ directly appropriates elements of white Americana; the
‘white trash’ look, all kinds of ‘redneck stuff’, the wife beater, the ‘trucker hat’, oversize belt buckles
with western motifs or bull heads, country music and so on. Ironically appreciated or not, one may

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Schiermer: Late-modern hipsters: New tendencies in popular culture 7

understand why this aesthetic has sparked a discussion of race and possible racism in hipster culture in
the USA (Jefferson, 2010: 99–102). Evidently these emblems and styles do not transmit the same signals
in a European context, but it remains a fact that hipster aesthetics indeed exploits and unfolds ‘popular’
cultural universes ironically: Ironic bingo, cheap crockery plaques on the wall, the sailor (‘skipper’)
figure (sou’wester rain hat, white beard and pipe), the crying child with his big watery eyes, the roaring
deer by the forest lake, all kinds of hunting emblematics, wall antlers, and so on. Indeed, here we find
ironic appreciation of objects and styles usually connected with ‘common’, völkish aesthetics. But does
this mean that hipster irony is a simple question of Bourdieuian degoût?
No, it does not. First of all, it is important to note that the ‘popular’ may also take on a distinctively
authentic and positive value in hipster culture. This is evidently the case in the hipster predilection for
pre-gentrified working-class neighbourhoods, for ‘authentic’ working-class pubs or ‘dives’ (Lanham,
2002: 37). A genuine appreciation often attaches to such places.
Second: Typical ‘popular’ expressions are not the only emblems up for ironic destruction in hipster
culture. As the photographic documentation placed at the end of the article shows, often, in hipster cafés,
archetypical bourgeois emblems such as mirrors and chandeliers are used in the same ironic, prodigal
and excessive ways as the kitschy painting of the old seaman or the wall antlers, that is, demonstratively,
‘tossed together’ on the ceiling or the walls (see Figures 1 - 4).
The demonstrative serial way of dealing with these objects intimates a moment of contempt. It is
implied that these items – emblems of other cultures, ‘segments’ or groups – are sold and enjoyed by
the meter (by these groups). They exude a lack of individuality.
One could point to other ironic phenomena hard to place or situated at completely disparate ‘posi-
tions’ in the cultural field: the enormous first-generation mobile phone, the moustache (the original
hipster signifier), the aesthetics of the Jehovah’s Witness magazine Watchtower, Arabic neo-rococo
over-ornamented bombast, the Eurovision Song Contest. Or one could point to the fascination with former
utopian fantasies centred around the ‘newest’ technologies or consumer objects of the past; the predilec-
tion for old science fiction or for the gaudy superheroes of the fifties, the fascination with megaloma-
niacal cement constructions of Soviet-era architectural engineering, the celebration of first-generation
‘arcade games’ and the granular aesthetics of the original ‘home computers’, the contemporary Ostalgie
cult of the tiny Trabant automobile once constituting the absolute object of desire for consumerist dream-
ing in the former East German republic and so on. Of equal appreciation to the ironist, ‘low’ and ‘high’
cultural products, commercial or non-commercialized forms, appear side by side in the contemporary
listing of popular ironic objects in hipster culture.
Now, all these objects have one thing in common: They were once subject to intense social investment.
They were once, if not ‘radically modern’, then at least collectively ‘actualized’, placed at the focal point of
the collective imaginary of the group. But without – at least so it seems to posterity – really deserving it.
Yesterday’s fashion is always bad taste. And bad taste is phenomenologically intriguing. The ‘outs’ or the
‘don’ts’ of the in-and-out lists of the tabloids portraying the excesses of the stars and the famous attract the
gaze. For the very same reasons, the hipster excesses fascinate the authors of the hipster handbooks.
Indeed, the ample use of photographs or illustrations of hipster excesses in the handbooks (see esp. Getty,
2012; Mande, 2010; Weingarten, 2011) hides a guilty pleasure, a delightful immersion in the exact same
form of ironic appreciation that the authors scorn the hipsters for seeking out.
Kitsch in the narrow sense – traditional ‘working class’ art or artistic practice – is but one instance of
such a dynamic. And this dynamic is by no means limited to the ‘popular’ field. Indeed, the exact same
collectively conditioned form of distortion and excess may be found around the different theoretical
fashions haunting the ‘softer parts’ of the academic environment. In sum, irony is not a necessity forced
upon the hipster due to his position in a ‘field’, but is nourished and sparked by the inauthenticity of the
object. And this inauthenticity is due to a lack of authority of the individual and of individual creation
(and reception) in the face of the powers of the collective.
Hipsters, however, are not always ironic. It is time to come back to the other salient trait of hipster
culture: the redemptive side.
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8 Acta Sociologica

Figure 1

Redemption of the recent past

The male hipster’s appreciation of the style of his father as a young man as found in the old photographs
from the mid-1970s, or the female hipster’s fascination with the dresses of her mother (or grandmother)
from the 1960s, is often for real. Hipster handbook author Brad Getty’s compilation of seventies photo-
graphs of ‘cool’ fathers, Dads are the Original Hipsters (2012), could just as well have been taken today
(of their sons). Dads are ‘pretty cool’ (Lanham, 2002: 46). It is no coincidence that young New York
comic Joe Mande’s book on hipsters is dedicated to his parents, and apparently sparked by a conversa-
tion of the hipster phenomenon with his father (Mande, 2010). It is my thesis that the hipster appreciation
of the aesthetic styles of the recent past ushers in another relation to the parental generation than the
one found in traditional sub or youth culture. In a word, the hipster culture is not a counter culture but
a conserver culture.
This positive or non-ironic strain to hipsterdom – the recirculation of forgotten objects for genuine
aesthetic enjoyment – is typically dismissed as a form of nostalgia, a lack of creative force or a form
of compulsive repetition (Grief et al., 2010: 37, 48–54; Kinzey, 2012: 49; Reynolds, 2011). I ask the
reader to recollect the introduction of this article. If noticed at all, the redemptive side of hipster sensi-
bility is often seen as a sheer ‘escape’ from present conditions and thus re-inscribed in traditional ‘mod-
ern’ forms of temporal longing (for another time).6 This, I think, is a misunderstanding.
The nostalgia allegation is advanced by an older generation who does itself wish to change ‘society’ –
feeling it belongs elsewhere – and thus does not see that an object may be selected exclusively for its
authentic aesthetical qualities and not as an excuse for dreaming oneself back (or forth) in time (Maffe-
soli, 1988). The completely non-ironic American television series Mad Men is probably the most popular
illustration of the current spread of these non-ironic and aestheticist sensibilities among the younger gen-
erations. In Scandinavia, the product is now sold in all major warehouses. The extremely aestheticized
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Schiermer: Late-modern hipsters: New tendencies in popular culture 9

Figure 2

Figure 3

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10 Acta Sociologica

Figure 4

series dwells on the paradigmatic objects of American 1950s’ and 1960s’ modernism in all areas of con-
sumption. It is permeated by a sense of devotion, by a sheer sensuous celebration and enjoyment of
styles, designs and objects that transcends plot and narrative. In a sense, the objects are the real actors
of the series. Mad Men thus exploits and democratizes inclinations and sensibilities long popular in hip-
ster culture. Rather than nostalgia, we are dealing with a shared investigation into the possibilities,
potentialities and sensibilities of past aesthetical universes – only this time it is not ironic.
A decisive aspect to this redemptive effort is the hipster veneration for dying media and old technol-
ogy. The hipster figure ushers in a new, sensuous awareness of the losses and sacrifices made by the
previous generations at the altar of technological development. The hipster is no time traveller; rather,
he actualizes what former generations fascinated by the latest technological developments have thought-
lessly relegated to the past. The hipster rediscovery of the vinyl disc record, the cassette tape, the travelling
typewriter, the traditional offset printing technique, the conventional ‘film’ camera and the ‘old-school’
photograph development hides a sensuous and pleasure-seeking conservatism. Hipster culture saves
sensibilities and ‘experiences’ inherent to certain media; from the warm scratching sound coming from
the pickup in the groove to the yellowed ambience of the old Polaroid photographs.7
Now, this redemption of the past – and the return to pre-digital media in particular – is directly related
to the intensification of the relation between imitation and individuality spelled out above. In contrast to
the full-blown digital media completely ‘reproducible at will’, the pre-digital technologies still conserve
a ‘remnant’ of ‘individuality’.8 The pre-digital objects thus present an obvious potential to the hipsters in
their quest for individualization and uniqueness. In a culture ‘at its age of digital reproduction’, indivi-
dualization often goes hand-in-hand with a rescue of the singular and ‘auratic’ objects of the pre-digital
past: The mistakes made in the darkroom singularize exactly this particular photograph, just as the
charming typing errors of the old typewriter make it unique. In a way the hipster carries out on a popular
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Schiermer: Late-modern hipsters: New tendencies in popular culture 11

scale what used to be the prerogative of the aristocratic dandy figure (in early critical theory): He insists
on individuality in the face of homogenization.
The fact that the ‘analogue’ sensibilities treasured in hipster culture are promptly seized upon and
developed into popular and digital versions – as, for instance, the ‘hipsta’matic’ or ‘instagram’ mobile
phone (camera) applications or the pastiche typewriter font downloadable on the internet illustrates with
all clarity – ensures us that the sensibilities and ‘experiences’ of former generations now become acces-
sible to a much larger segment of the population. On the one hand, this development demonstrates that
the bridges across the generational gap first inaugurated by the hipsters are now broad enough to bridge
another relation between the generations altogether. On the other hand, this development contributes to
radicalize further the quest for the idiosyncratic, the analogue and the unique so characteristic of late-
modern western culture even further.

Subculture, post-subculture, hipster culture

We now understand some of the sociological embarrassment in the face of hipster culture. Granted, the
carefully selected objects entitle the hipster to a certain amount of ‘subcultural capital’ (Thornton, 1995).
In this aspect, hipster culture is no different from other cultural fields. To be sure, hipsters have a precise
knowledge of their position in this field; often, they are more skilled ‘life-style’ experts than many edu-
cated sociologists. Moreover, the ‘popular dandyism’ of the hipster, the knowledge of the most ‘minor
distinctions’, the exclusive focus on the past may all be understood as a hidden celebration of the status
quo so typical of the educated middle classes. And yet, when it came to an understanding of the phenom-
enological fascinations of hipster culture and their dynamic nature the Bourdieuian templates were not of
much use.
However, a traditional Birmingham school Marxist-inspired approach, obstinately focusing on rebel-
lion and resistance (e.g. Blackman, 2005) does not do much better. Notably, it can hardly make sense of
the positive attitude towards the cultural preferences of the former generation. Neither in norms nor in
cultural preferences do the hipsters deviate decisively from their parents, nor are the objects of hipster
culture in any way unknown to the parent generation. Hipster culture is no ‘contraculture’ (Yinger, 1960:
630). In a word: it is not the hipsters, but the parents, who – either too soon or not soon enough – have left
the objects now treasured or destroyed by the hipsters behind. An attempt to ‘read’ hipster material
culture as a rebellious ‘text’ (Hebdige, 2010) would completely miss the motives behind hipster object
choice.
Yet, how to describe hipster culture, if it is no traditional subculture or counterculture at all? To
answer this question, we may seek help in current ‘post-modern’ or ‘post-subcultural’ sociologies of cul-
ture: Is hipster culture a ‘post-subculture’ (Muggleton and Weinzierl, 2004)? A ‘lifestyle’ (Bennett,
1999; Miles, 2000)? A ‘taste culture’ (Thornton, 1995)? A ‘scene’ (Irwin, 1997)? Or is it simply a name
for a democratization of certain attitudes and sensibilities? Obviously, the metaphor of the ‘scene’ aptly
connotes to Goffman’s ‘stage’ and to the aesthetical attitude of hipsterdom; it also situates the hipsters
where they belong; at the urban ‘scene’. Moreover, Maffesoli’s concept of the ‘neo-tribe’ (1988), to
a certain degree informing all the current critiques of the traditional ideas of subculture, indeed seizes
some of the transience and fluidity of a subculture held together predominantly by changing object tastes
and without clear borders, let alone any centralization or organization. This notwithstanding, the typical
focus on marginal collective events and effervescent ‘rituals’ of the Maffesoli-inspired studies misses
the prominence of individuality in hipster culture. Conversely, the variant of post-modern subculture
studies that focuses on individual ‘consumption’ and construction or ‘play’ with ‘identities’ (Redhead,
1995) misses both the central imitational dimension altogether and the continuing importance of notions
of individuality and authenticity.
The complexity of these theories cannot be done justice here. Suffice to say that, even though some of
the current theories do portray a certain interest in irony and so-called ‘retro’ phenomena, none of them
really investigates the causes behind ‘retro’ irony and they all miss the redemptive side of hipster culture.
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12 Acta Sociologica

More importantly, however, none of them sufficiently draws into account how the ever more accentuated
process of individualization, exploding traditional subculture from within, is haunted by an ever more
accentuated ‘fear’ of imitation. Homogenization occurs constantly, emerging and disappearing, as it
were, from within or from ‘below’, without strong positive collective claims, without positive enforce-
ment of norms and sanctions and without active or reflexive drawing of borders. Uniformity is constantly
eroded by individual expression and individual expression is constantly eroded by uniformity. This
dynamic blurs the borders of hipster culture, making traditional ‘subcultural’ forms of collective beha-
viour impossible. On the one hand, it emancipates the individual to a certain degree from restricted and
oppressive collective identities and thus permits a more liberal choice among cultural expressions, a
bridging of disparate cultural fields and positions in the hunt for the overtly authentic or the overtly
failed. On the other hand it synchronizes the individuals behind their backs.
But this dynamic also leads to a democratization of the hipster attitude. In a certain sense, Grief is
right when he insists that the original hipsters have disappeared. What he ignores, however, is that the
hipster ethos is more alive than ever. Of course, this or that particular ‘hipster’ trend may be popularized
and democratized – it may even be digitalized and commercialized. But this will only result in yet other
redemptive and expressive ventures into the recent past. Coming hipsters will exploit and investigate yet
other sensibilities and possibilities of dying media, ways of cultural expression, and obsolete technolo-
gies belonging to the past. Hipster culture in the narrow sense is the Avant-garde of this redemptive or
ironic effort; hipster culture in the more extended sense is the popularization of these sensibilities and
experiences.

Conclusion
It is time to take yet another step back. Granted, the turn toward the recent past reveals structural traits;
not least the fact that the invention of the truly new has become increasingly difficult. The increasing
‘negativity’ and ‘reflexivity’ of the modern cultural institutions – invading the art institution from the
beginning of the 20th century and now increasingly infecting the works of the ‘culture industry’ as well
– also testifies to this. Hipster culture is thus also a symptom of structural dynamics haunting our cultural
institutions and forcing us to turn our attention to the past. Yet these structural features do not suffice to
explain the hipster phenomenon.
My suggestion has been to put a somewhat Simmelian framework to use (Simmel, 1995) and to focus
on how the distinction between imitation and individuality is constantly played out. Consequently, in this
article I have written about hipster culture as an extreme instance of the tense dynamic of individualiza-
tion and imitation haunting western culture at large: Every tourist likes to go to the places where no tour-
ists are. The distinction between self-assertion and imitation takes on an extreme acuity in hipster
culture, but, in effect, it asserts itself to an ever-greater degree in most realms of culture in late-
modern Western society. Consequently, since the radical expression of this opposition found among the
hipsters gains ground, there is good reason in seeking to understand its consequences, empirically as well
as theoretically.
In hipster culture this opposition has become so acute that it tends to cause a polarization of the object
world. The hipsters exert a form of cultural hygiene, either ironically burning the objects of the recent
past which deserve it or redeeming authentic cultural expressions from oblivion.
On the one hand, a predilection for the glaringly inauthentic emerges. In short, instead of, as in
traditional subculture, positively claiming the authenticity of their proper cultural objects and practises,
hipsters scorn the inauthenticity of others’ practices. Instead of inventing and expressing themselves,
they excavate the failed attempts at self-assertion of others. Here we find the different forms of irony
so characteristic of hipster culture: a characteristic ‘veneration’ of ‘bad taste’, of kitsch and ‘camp’. As
we have seen, the rich phenomenology of such ironic objects is pregnant with underlying social
impulses. Hipsters deliberately seek out the ‘places of crime’ at which imitational dynamics have
seduced individual or collective imagination and led to all kinds of digressions, extortions and
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Schiermer: Late-modern hipsters: New tendencies in popular culture 13

exaggerations. In the ‘depth’ of the hipster sensibility we did not find Bourdieuian degoût but a fascina-
tion of the self-degradation of the individual in the face of collective dynamics. The ironic attitude
towards technologies of the recent past hides a quasi-existential awareness of the proper ‘embeddedness’
in certain paradigms of fascination and attraction at totally captivating the senses, but possible to trans-
cend with the spirit. I know that the trousers, I currently adore, will change their look next year (without
having changed a bit), but I cannot see it now. I know that I previously cherished objects aesthetically or
intellectually that now appear failed and gaudy. Now, to the extent that this sensation of ‘ironic embedd-
edness’ reaches an unseen level in hipster culture, it may actually function as a basis for a new form of
solidarity with the former generations.
On the other hand, the hipster insists on the authenticity of certain treasured objects to a hitherto
unseen degree. Hipster culture’s quest for the authentic is so strong that it may transcend usual cultural
borders, generational gaps and social distinctions in search for genuine cultural expressions. Running
counter to the ironic strain, hipster culture is characterized by a hitherto unseen openness for the authen-
tic creations of others. In real life, hipsters often combine authentic and inauthentic objects, connect
different fields and upset usual hierarchies.
Now, evidently, the two complementary sides to hipster object appreciation are themselves inscribed
in dynamics of individualization and imitation taking place around the chosen objects in as much as they
are inscribed in concrete front stage work. All collective selection processes mark a position in regard to
the tastes of other contemporary groups or individuals and thus demarcate a shared hipster position on a
number of stylistic parameters. Simply asserting, however, that what keeps the hipsters ‘together’ is but
their shared habitus does not explain much; rather, to understand the dynamics of constant change haunt-
ing their world and to understand how a strongly individualized culture may still achieve some degree of
unity, the focal point of the investigation has to be placed on the way unconscious imitational dynamics
surfaces in apparent self-assertion.
Hipster culture ushers in another sense of culture and cultural development. Perhaps, we are witnes-
sing the beginning of the end of the idea of cultural modernite´ so characteristic of modern western soci-
ety since the end of the 18th century. We lack sociological visions for a society in which the cultural
differences among the generations are fading, in which new forms of contemporaneity and in-contem-
poraneity assert themselves, and in which the opposition between individuality and imitation seems to
become ever more acute and reflexive.

Acknowledgements
I thank three anonymous reviewers for very constructive and detailed reviewing. Most of their suggestions have in
some way or another been taken up in the article. I also thank my students from the Cultural Sociology course at the
Department of Sociology in Copenhagen for their enthusiasm and their helpful comments in relation to a first draft.

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes
1. An overview can be found in Arsel and Thompson (2011), who also deliver important clues to the
recent discovery of the hipster figure by popular media and to an investigation into the literary history
of the term. Also Hebdige delivers clues to the historical hipster figure (2010: 46–49).
2. Which does not, on the other hand, mean that ‘authentic individuality’ is completely bereft of imita-
tion. Only the madman does not imitate.
3. Thus, at one of Stockholm’s English-speaking ‘event’ Internet sites we read about the area of Söder-
malm that ‘a hipster revolution has turned this once working-class neighbourhood into a hot-spot for
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14 Acta Sociologica

artists, musicians, hip designers, bohemian cafés, edgy shops, and funky restaurants’. See http://your
livingcity.com/essentials/guide-stockholms-neighborhoods/
4. I thank my students Trine Bentzen, Helene Hvidberg, Helene Mogensen and Katrine Lauritzen for
access to their interview transcripts from an investigation into Copenhagen nightlife. The focus group
interview was conducted in Copenhagen on the 7th of May 2012.
5. Joe and The Juice is a local coffee shop and juice chain also tied to the hipster scene, yet, apparently,
frequented by a less ‘depraved’ type of hipster than the bar in question.
6. Here I am also alluding to the somewhat older account of Jameson (2003). Sometimes the notion of
nostalgia even seems to comprise ironic appreciation as in Boym (2001). For a treatment of the
difference (and relation) between irony and nostalgia, see Hutcheon (2000).
7. At this point also, hipster culture may be seen as a precursor to general tendencies. The German–Ira-
nian artist Yadegar Asisi’s redemption of the 360 panorama – digitally rescuing and enhancing the
old media – placed in front of the Pergamon Museum in Berlin was the largest museum attraction in
the city in 2011.
8. I permit myself to paraphrase one of my reviewers.

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Author biography
Bjørn Schiermer obtained a PhD in Sociology from the Department of Sociology at the University of
Copenhagen in 2010, where he currently holds a position as Assistant Professor. Beside his interests in
the sociology of culture, he has just embarked on a historical project centred on the classic sociologists’
relation to Immanuel Kant.

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