Subcultures and conspiracy theories

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Subcultures and conspiracy theories

• Lesson 12
• SOC 86 Popular Culture
• Robert Wonser

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Variations within a Culture

• The dominant culture refers to the values, norms,
  and practices of the group within society that is
  most powerful in terms of wealth, prestige,
  status, and influence.
• A subculture is a group within society that is
  differentiated by its distinctive values, norms,
  and lifestyle.
• A counterculture is a group within society that
  openly rejects and/or actively opposes societys
  values and norms.

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Subcultures Specifically

• Prefix sub is telling implies subaltern or
  subterranean, below
• Commonalities
• Groups studied as subcultures are often
  positioned by themselves or others as deviant or
  debased
• Labeled as subculture implies lower down the
  social ladder due to social differences of class,
  race, ethnicity and age.

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Preconditions for the Emergence of Subcultures

• Youth is a social construct, adolescence and
  teenagers are new ideas
• Youth a stage of life defined as entailing a
  psychosocial moratorium from adult
  responsibilities and thus enables experimentation
  with identitya product of the economic
  development and affluence of Western societies in
  the twentieth century
• Made possible because of extended higher ed,
  postponement of work, birth control ? Youth as an
  in-between phase of the life cycle free of most
  adult responsibilities and free of many (but not
  all) child restrictions

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The Invention of Adolescence
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Only in Context

• Could only emerge in the specific context in
  which they did
• First, a dominant, mass culture had to exist to
  rebel against
• This dominant culture was a product of middle
  class post-war affluence and many subcultures are
  products of the declining middle class and the
  identity crisis that ensues afterward

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• Intrinsically linked with our consumerist
  society eventually it is exposed as vapid and
  unable to satiate individual desires for identity
  fulfillment ? how unique are you when you like
  what everyone else likes?
• Where to turn? Subcultures. They offer identity
  most importantly, authentic identity partially
  defined in terms of its opposition to the
  mainstream cultures values and products.
• In this respect identity formation is linked to
  consumption.
• Subcultures attempt to provide an authentic
  identity for its adherents in the face of an
  increasingly vapid society

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Punk

• The term punk was used because it seemed to
  sum up the thread that connected everything we
  likeddrunk, obnoxious, smart but not
  pretentious, absurd, funny, ironic, and things
  that appealed to the darker side. Legs McNeil
• Emerged during recession in NYC and after
  neoliberal (theory that champions privatization
  and condemns state intervention in the free
  market) policies decimated the city
• Emergence of punk as a response to the demise of
  rock and the failure of sixties utopianism

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The Irony and Resurgence of Punk

• Punk was seen as authentic in its opposition to
  mainstream music and society ? this was precisely
  how it was later co-opted and marketed as a form
  of rebellion
• Be different, buy
• this!

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Style

• Subcultures take on a spectacular form by
  appropriating commodities and using them in
  innovative and unintended ways that assign them
  new, subversive meanings in the process of
  creating style.

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• Subculture participants still seek identity
  through their subcultures based on authenticity
  and difference from an imagined mainstream but
  a post-fordist view of capitalism blurs the
  boundary between subculture and popular culture
  increasingly threatening these identities.
• How do punks manage this crisis of identity?

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Different Punk Identities
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Heavy Metal

• Emerged amid deindustrialization during the 70s
  and 80s
• Contributed to the polarization of social classes
  but also has been experienced as a crisis in
  masculinity.
• Job losses and downward mobility caused by
  deindustrialization have emasculated
  working-class men by displacing notions of the
  breadwinner ethic that was romanticized during
  the 50s and 60s.
• Coincided with other societal changes increased
  women in the workforce and visibility of the
  feminist movement.
• Many men interpreted this as a threat to their
  privileged position

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Conspiracy Theorists
Or so THEYD like you to believe
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Defining Conspiracy

• The essence of conspiracy belief lies in attempts
  to delineate and explain evil
• The result is a worldview characterized by a
  sharp vision between the realms of good and evil
• Conspiracy belief is the belief that an
  organization made up of individuals or groups was
  or is acting covertly to achieve some malevolent
  end.
• A conspiracist worldview implies a universe
  governed by design rather than by randomness.

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Conspiracy Theories

• Have three principles in common
• Nothing happens by accident
• Nothing is as it seems
• Everything is connected

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• This view is both frightening and reassuring
• Frightening because it magnifies the power of
  evil (light and darkness struggle for cosmic
  supremacy)
• Reassuring because it promises a world that is
  meaningful rather than arbitrary.
• It also provides a definable enemy against which
  to struggle, endowing life with a purpose.

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Belief in Conspiracies

• Allows believers to make some sense of a complex
  and ever-changing world
• The same trends that disaffected the punks, heavy
  metalers and youth in general play out in
  seemingly secretive ways.
• It is difficult to see and understand complex
  forces political, sociological, and economic.
  An answer has to be found somewhere

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What Unites These disparate cultures?

• Fear and uncertainty
• They are all reactions to the decline of the
  middle class
• Punk sees it ostensibly as a messed up culture
  from its onset, metal and conspiracy theorists
  believes it has lost its former glory and, unable
  to understand the complex sociological factors
  that resulted in where we are to day, turn to
  what seems to make sense to explain why the world
  has changed and theyve lost their social status.

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Or..

• Of course, thats what they WANT you to believe.

Yep, thats the desk of Fox Mulder.