106-430 Studying Subcultures

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Subject Description:

This subject studies texts and events relating to various subcultural formations, including gangs, music subcultures, drug cultures, ethnic or diasporic subcultures, queer cultures, body art cultures and techno-cultures. Students will understand how cultural arrangements and identifications can occur through the subcultural frame; they will also examine ways in which cultural forms can be contested or claimed by subcultures. Students will be encouraged to read subcultures both textually and sociologically - appreciating in particular ethnographic problems in relation to the documentation of subcultural activity. They will also analyse subcultural studies as an historically-framed discipline, beginning with late 19th century ethnographies and developing through the Chicago School and the Birmingham tradition.

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Prescribed Texts:

• D Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, Routledge.
• K Gelder and S Thornton eds, The Subcultures Reader, Routledge.