Trapnest, Hebdige

Hebdige’s piece “Subculture: The Meaning of Style” is a compilation and assessment on previous theorists work and an analysis on culture. Hebdige begins by looking at the “notoriously ambiguous concept” of culture. He sites the work of Williams, saying that one way to observe culture as relationships, interactions, broad shared meanings that encompass every element of a society. Elaborating upon these shared meanings that can unite society Hebdige moves onto the work of Barthes and Althusser. In shared meanings and signs as well as the dominant ideologies that can unify and unite a culture. These two elements of culture are related, because it is as a result of shared signs that a culture can have dominant ideologies across a broad range of people. These broad ideologies bring forth hegemony; hegemony is rooted in a system of unbalance where one group has the ability to be dominant over another. Subordinate groups are made to understand that this is “natural.”

Then Hebdige begins to discuss the break that subculture creates within a society. As he says,

“Subcultures represent “noise” (as opposed to sound): interference in the orderly sequence which leads from real events and phenomena to their representation in media.” (153)

This is saying that the subculture is against the dominant culture, and their representation within the media context is translated from the actual events and setting. This subculture uses the dominant signs to oppose the dominant ideologies, it’s this metamorphosis of common understandings that creates the nature of the subculture, the opposition. Finally Hebdige begins to discuss the incorporation of these subcultures, their signs and understandings are either mass produced, or they are defined as the “Other” or the “Enemy.”

All of this makes me think of Durkheim’s notions on society in his work “The Division of Labor in Society.” He discusses in this that the Traditional society, which I link to the world of the hegemonic ideologies because in Durkheim’s traditional society everyone is very similar and operates with a similar mindset. Therefore, the subculture is linked to the Modern Society, the society in which people thrive more on individualism and become to separate from those normal Molds. As Durkheim’s Modernity suggests these movements cannot be stopped and eventually overtake the Traditional Society, as seen in Hebdige’s work.