Youth subcultures are a phenomenon present in every society and one that also influences that society. We could define them as the culture of a particular group of people, understood as part of culture as such, yet containing certain differences from dominant culture and having their own specific features. Baldwin (2006) offers a very simple definition of subculture. He argues that a subculture is essentially just a deviation from dominant culture. Such a definition is of course insufficient. Therefore, we supplement it with additional definitions by various authors. For example, we refer to Strieženec (1996). He considers subcultures to mean partial cultures as components of the total culture of society, which have their own norms, values, lifestyle, and so forth. They consist of combinations of socio-situational components, e.g., origin, class status, social positions (student culture), ethnic origin, place of residence, religious affiliation (sects, rituals), age (youth culture), poverty, etc. The extent to which subcultures differ from mainstream culture varies, from identification to opposition. There may be conflicts between them, for instance on national or ethnic grounds, but also on social grounds. From this definition we can also see that it describes alternative cultures as a whole rather than subcultures as a separate category. The term subculture is more often used to describe a set of specific cultural elements that characterize a particular group within a broader community, or the dominant, mainstream culture of which this group is a constitutive part. The more complex and multifaceted society is, the more likely it is that different subcultures will emerge. Subcultures may arise based on ethnic or religious affiliation, place of residence, age, class, and other factors. However, for us to speak about a certain group of people as a subculture, we must identify several core attributes within it.
Jusko (2005) lists these as follows: Subcultures are smaller, well-defined groups that are part of a higher-level whole. The internal structure of a subculture must include the same components as dominant culture, namely material, spiritual, and normative components. In at least some elements of these components, the subculture must differ from the major culture. And the final characteristic is that the subculture must be relatively stable over time. For better understanding, we will discuss and explain these characteristics more closely.
The first characteristic is probably the easiest to fulfill. Because subculture in society operates as a subsystem of culture as a whole, while dominant culture is the majority one, we usually speak of smaller groups with clearly defined specificities that function within the overall culture (the larger whole). But what do the individual components that every culture, and therefore subculture, must contain mean?
The material component is everything that is a product of that culture. In this sense it includes, for example, the visible aspects of the culture (subculture), such as clothing and its typical elements, fashion accessories, objects used by the culture, as well as cultural outputs such as poems, songs, literature, art, hairstyles, symbols, and so on. For the well-known subculture Hippies, we could include, for example, long hair, batik clothing, flowers as accessories to clothing, scarves tied to different parts of the body, the peace sign, the Volkswagen T1 car (the so-called Hippie Van), as well as many hippie poems, songs, posters, written reflections, or the music style “Acid rock,” which developed in music groups of precisely the Hippie generation, and so on. The spiritual component of culture (and thus also of subculture) is its basic philosophical starting point. It answers the questions: “Why are we doing this?”, “What do we base ourselves on?”, “What do we want to achieve?”, “What is our goal?” In the aforementioned subculture Hippies, for example, it is the promotion of free love, anti-war efforts, pointing to the flaws of consumer society, etc. The normative component answers the question, “What must I do in order to be a member of this culture?” It is therefore a set of written and unwritten rules of that culture. In dominant culture these include, for example, laws, ministerial decrees, generally recognized values and the value framework of society, generally valid moral norms, etc. Every subculture sets its own rules that its members must follow. The third feature of subcultures is that in at least some elements these components must differ from dominant culture. Already by having their own specificities in their own rules, differences in outward expression, perception of life reality and life philosophy, i.e., by having their own specificities in the material, spiritual, and normative components, they differ from dominant culture. The hardest to satisfy, however, is the last feature—relative stability over time. This means that subcultures should not change under the influence of “fashion.” In other words, when we mention the word Hippies or Emo or Punk or any other subculture, members of that subculture today should have the same, or at least very similar, features as in the past when the subculture emerged, and as they will have in the future. Because this characteristic is indeed difficult to satisfy, many youth groups cannot be designated by this term; in reality, they are only youth groups, or we might call them only pseudo-subcultures. Sackmann (1992) further notes that a subculture must contain ideologies, a coherent set of convictions or basic assumptions, a set of shared core values, a collective will, or collective programming of the human mind.
Just as the subcultures themselves, membership in them also has its own rules and specificities. Young people often believe that to become members of a subculture, it is enough simply to declare themselves members. This is not entirely true. Outward expressions alone are not sufficient for a young person to be considered a member of a subculture. Membership in subcultures can be divided into several levels, or rather, types. We mainly divide it by the aspect of “subculturality,” which we can understand as the extent to which all aspects of a subculture are implemented in a person’s inner experience and overall lifestyle.
The first group are members of subcultures. They accept the subculture as a whole, it becomes an inseparable part of their lives, and they adapt both their outward and inward expressions to the ideas of the subculture. They therefore know the subculture well: its history, ideas, goals, and also recognize its myths and can refute them. They do not adapt their perception, behavior, expression, opinions, or actions to the current situation in which they find themselves; instead, they remain loyal in their thinking, behavior, expression, opinions, and actions to the roots of the subculture. They are often given the label “Old school.” It is important that they be recognized as members by the subculture itself and its other members.
The second group are so-called quasi-members of subcultures. These are young people who adopt only some aspects of the subculture, mainly according to what they like. They do not adapt their lives to subcultural ideas; they most often adopt only selected outward elements of the subculture (hairstyle, clothing, language use, etc.) without knowing its basic philosophical premises. These outward expressions have little in common with the ideas and symbolism that are meant to be represented. Quasi-members are not accepted as members of subcultures either.
The third group is called sympathizers of the subculture. These are people who are not directly members and do not want to be members, do not adopt subcultural elements, and do not try to imitate a particular subculture in any way. Yet they not only agree with its ideas but also try to defend and support it. For example, if we understood lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals, and intersex people as a subculture (they are often referred to as the LGBTI community, but sometimes also as the LGBTI subculture), then a sympathizer of this subculture would be someone who publicly fights against their discrimination, openly supports registered partnerships, participates in petitions for their legalization, and helps them realize and claim their human rights, even if they themselves are not LGBTI-focused.
From the perspective of subcultural risks, the most at risk are especially quasi-members of subcultures. These are people who often do not properly understand the subculture and therefore adopt mainly its negative aspects. In terms of numbers, quasi-members of subcultures are the largest group. For this reason, it is important that professionals and youth workers pay specific attention precisely to this group of young people.
Conclusion
The purpose of this contribution was not to look at youth subcultures from the perspective of their expressions, specific aims, distinct features, appearance of their members, and so on. The aim was to offer a view on something that is so rarely written about in the literature, if at all, namely from the perspective of types of membership in it. If we can identify the variant of subcultural membership in which a young person is situated, it can tell us a great deal about the extent to which different pathologies of that subculture may occur in them, and to what degree they are out of balance with its benefits. As we said, the most at risk are indeed the quasi-members, since they know almost none of its positive aspects and adopt only those aspects that allow them to express their revolt, which is so closely linked to the period of adolescence, specifically puberty and adolescence. We believe that based on what has been written, we have managed at least to some basic degree to bring this issue closer to you.
Autor: PhDr. Peter Papšo, PhD.
Katedra sociálnej práce PF UMB v Banskej Bystrici
List of Bibliographic References
BALDWIN, D. 2006. Subculture. In: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=subculture
JUSKO, P. 2005. Riziká súčasnej mládeže z pohľadu sociálnej pedagogiky a sociálnej práce. In Mládež a spoločnosť, Vol. 11, 2005, č. 3, ISSN 1335-1109
SACKMANN, S. A. 1992. Culture and Subcultures: An Analysis of Organizational Knowledge. In: Administrative Science Quarterly, vol. 37, Issue 1, 1992. ISSN 0001-8392
STRIEŽENEC, Š. 1996. Slovník sociálneho pracovníka. Trnava: AD, 1996. ISBN 80-967589-0-X