{"id":100,"date":"2016-04-28T00:00:13","date_gmt":"2016-04-28T00:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/introductiontosociology-waymaker\/?post_type=chapter&p=100"},"modified":"2016-07-02T19:32:34","modified_gmt":"2016-07-02T19:32:34","slug":"reading-pop-culture-subculture-and-cultural-change","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/sanjacinto-introsociology-1\/chapter\/reading-pop-culture-subculture-and-cultural-change\/","title":{"raw":"Reading: Pop Culture and Subculture","rendered":"Reading: Pop Culture and Subculture"},"content":{"raw":"
\r\n

High Culture and Popular Culture<\/h2>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
\r\n

Do you prefer listening to opera or hip hop music? Do you like watching horse racing or NASCAR? Do you read books of poetry or celebrity magazines? In each pair, one type of entertainment is considered high-brow and the other low-brow. Sociologists use the term high culture<\/span><\/strong> to describe the pattern of cultural experiences and attitudes that exist in the highest class segments of a society. People often associate high culture with intellectualism, political power, and prestige. In America, high culture also tends to be associated with wealth. Events considered high culture can be expensive and formal\u2014attending a ballet, seeing a play, or listening to a live symphony performance.<\/p>\r\n

The term popular culture<\/span><\/strong> refers to the pattern of cultural experiences and attitudes that exist in mainstream society. Popular culture events might include a parade, a baseball game, or the season finale of a television show. Rock and pop music\u2014\u201cpop\u201d is short for \u201cpopular\u201d\u2014are part of popular culture. Popular culture is often expressed and spread via commercial media such as radio, television, movies, the music industry, publishers, and corporate-run websites. Unlike high culture, popular culture is known and accessible to most people. You can share a discussion of favorite football teams with a new coworker or comment on American Idol<\/em> when making small talk in line at the grocery store. But if you tried to launch into a deep discussion on the classical Greek play Antigone<\/em>, few members of U.S. society today would be familiar with it.<\/p>\r\n

Although high culture may be viewed as superior to popular culture, the labels of high culture and popular culture vary over time and place. Shakespearean plays, considered pop culture when they were written, are now part of our society\u2019s high culture. Five hundred years from now, will our descendants associate Breaking Bad<\/em> with the cultural elite?<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/section>

\r\n

Subculture and Counterculture<\/h2>\r\n

A subculture<\/span><\/strong> is just what it sounds like\u2014a smaller cultural group within a larger culture; people of a subculture are part of the larger culture but also share a specific identity within a smaller group.<\/p>\r\n

Thousands of subcultures exist within the United States. Ethnic and racial groups share the language, food, and customs of their heritage. Other subcultures are united by shared experiences. Biker culture revolves around a dedication to motorcycles. Some subcultures are formed by members who possess traits or preferences that differ from the majority of a society\u2019s population. The body modification community embraces aesthetic additions to the human body, such as tattoos, piercings, and certain forms of plastic surgery. In the United States, adolescents often form subcultures to develop a shared youth identity. Alcoholics Anonymous offers support to those suffering from alcoholism. But even as members of a subculture band together, they still identify with and participate in the larger society.<\/p>\r\n

Sociologists distinguish subcultures from countercultures<\/span><\/strong>, which are a type of subculture that rejects some of the larger culture\u2019s norms and values. In contrast to subcultures, which operate relatively smoothly within the larger society, countercultures might actively defy larger society by developing their own set of rules and norms to live by, sometimes even creating communities that operate outside of greater society.<\/p>\r\n

Cults, a word derived from culture, are also considered counterculture group. The group \u201cYearning for Zion\u201d (YFZ) in Eldorado, Texas, existed outside the mainstream and the limelight, until its leader was accused of statutory rape and underage marriage. The sect\u2019s formal norms clashed too severely to be tolerated by U.S. law, and in 2008, authorities raided the compound and removed more than two hundred women and children from the property.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

\r\n

The Evolution of American Hipster Subculture<\/h3>\r\n

Skinny jeans, chunky glasses, and T-shirts with vintage logos\u2014the American hipster is a recognizable figure in the modern United States. Based predominately in metropolitan areas, sometimes clustered around hotspots such as the Williamsburg neighborhood in New York City, hipsters define themselves through a rejection of the mainstream. As a subculture, hipsters spurn many of the values and beliefs of U.S. culture and prefer vintage clothing to fashion and a bohemian lifestyle to one of wealth and power. While hipster culture may seem to be the new trend among young, middle-class youth, the history of the group stretches back to the early decades of the 1900s.<\/p>\r\n

Where did the hipster culture begin? In the early 1940s, jazz music was on the rise in the United States. Musicians were known as \u201chepcats\u201d and had a smooth, relaxed quality that went against upright, mainstream life. Those who were \u201chep\u201d or \u201chip\u201d lived by the code of jazz, while those who were \u201csquare\u201d lived according to society\u2019s rules. The idea of a \u201chipster\u201d was born.<\/p>\r\nThe hipster movement spread, and young people, drawn to the music and fashion, took on attitudes and language derived from the culture of jazz. Unlike the vernacular of the day, hipster slang was purposefully ambiguous. When hipsters said, \u201cIt\u2019s cool, man,\u201d they meant not that everything was good, but that it was the way it was.\r\n<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignleft\" width=\"234\"]\"A In the 1940s, U.S. hipsters were associated with the \u201ccool\u201d culture of jazz. (Photo courtesy of William P. Gottlieb\/Ira and Leonore S. Gershwin Fund Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress)[\/caption]\r\n

By the 1950s, the jazz culture was winding down and many traits of hepcat culture were becoming mainstream. A new subculture was on the rise. The \u201cBeat Generation,\u201d a title coined by writer Jack Kerouac, were anticonformist and antimaterialistic. They were writers who listened to jazz and embraced radical politics. They bummed around, hitchhiked the country, and lived in squalor.<\/p>\r\n

The lifestyle spread. College students, clutching copies of Kerouac\u2019s On the Road<\/em>, dressed in berets, black turtlenecks, and black-rimmed glasses. Women wore black leotards and grew their hair long. Herb Caen, a San Francisco journalist, used the suffix from Sputnik 1<\/em>, the Russian satellite that orbited Earth in 1957, to dub the movement\u2019s followers \u201cBeatniks.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

As the Beat Generation faded, a new, related movement began. It too focused on breaking social boundaries, but it also advocated freedom of expression, philosophy, and love. It took its name from the generations before; in fact, some theorists claim that Beats themselves coined the term to describe their children. Over time, the \u201clittle hipsters\u201d of the 1970s became known simply as \u201chippies.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"224\"]\"A Intellectual and trendy, today\u2019s hipsters define themselves through cultural irony. (Photo courtesy of Lorena Cupcake\/Wikimedia Commons)[\/caption]\r\n

Today\u2019s generation of hipsters rose out of the hippie movement in the same way that hippies rose from Beats and Beats from hepcats. Although contemporary hipsters may not seem to have much in common with 1940s hipsters, the emulation of nonconformity is still there. In 2010, sociologist Mark Greif set about investigating the hipster subculture of the United States and found that much of what tied the group members together was not based on fashion, musical taste, or even a specific point of contention with the mainstream. \u201cAll hipsters play at being the inventors or first adopters of novelties,\u201d Greif wrote. \u201cPride comes from knowing, and deciding, what\u2019s cool in advance of the rest of the world. Yet the habits of hatred and accusation are endemic to hipsters because they feel the weakness of everyone\u2019s position\u2014including their own\u201d (Greif 2010). Much as the hepcats of the jazz era opposed common culture with carefully crafted appearances of coolness and relaxation, modern hipsters reject mainstream values with a purposeful apathy.<\/p>\r\nYoung people are often drawn to oppose mainstream conventions, even if in the same way that others do. Ironic, cool to the point of non-caring, and intellectual, hipsters continue to embody a subculture, while simultaneously impacting mainstream culture.\r\n<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/section>

\r\n
\r\n
\r\n

Further Research<\/h3>\r\n

The Beats were a counterculture that birthed an entire movement of art, music, and literature\u2014much of which is still highly regarded and studied today. The man responsible for naming the generation was Jack Kerouac; however, the man responsible for introducing the world to that generation was John Clellon Holmes, a writer often lumped in with the group. In 1952 he penned an article for the New York Times Magazine<\/em> titled, \u201cThis Is the Beat Generation.\u201d Read that article and learn more about Clellon Holmes and the Beats: http:\/\/openstaxcollege.org\/l\/The-Beats<\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

\r\n

Think It Over<\/h3>\r\n
\r\n
\r\n
    \r\n \t
  1. Identify several examples of popular culture and describe how they inform larger culture. How prevalent is the effect of these examples in your everyday life?<\/li>\r\n \t
  2. Consider some of the specific issues or concerns of your generation. Are any ideas countercultural? What subcultures have emerged from your generation? How have the issues of your generation expressed themselves culturally? How has your generation made its mark on society\u2019s collective culture?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/section><\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
    \r\n

    Practice<\/h3>\r\n
    \r\n
    \r\n

    1. An example of high culture is ___________, whereas an example of popular culture would be ____________.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

      \r\n \t
    1. Dostoevsky style in film; \u201cAmerican Idol\u201d winners<\/li>\r\n \t
    2. medical marijuana; film noir<\/li>\r\n \t
    3. country music; pop music<\/li>\r\n \t
    4. political theory; sociological theory<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
      \r\n
      [reveal-answer q=\"328416\"]Show Answer[\/reveal-answer]\r\n[hidden-answer a=\"328416\"]a[\/hidden-answer]<\/div>\r\n
      \r\n
      <\/div>\r\n<\/section><\/div>\r\n<\/section><\/div>\r\n
      \r\n
      \r\n

      2. The Ku Klux Klan is an example of what part of culture?<\/p>\r\n\r\n

        \r\n \t
      1. Counterculture<\/li>\r\n \t
      2. Subculture<\/li>\r\n \t
      3. Multiculturalism<\/li>\r\n \t
      4. Afrocentricity<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
        \r\n
        [reveal-answer q=\"797046\"]Show Answer[\/reveal-answer]\r\n[hidden-answer a=\"797046\"]a[\/hidden-answer]<\/div>\r\n
        \r\n
        <\/div>\r\n<\/section><\/div>\r\n<\/section><\/div>\r\n
        \r\n
        \r\n

        3. Modern-day hipsters are an example of:<\/p>\r\n\r\n

          \r\n \t
        1. ethnocentricity<\/li>\r\n \t
        2. counterculture<\/li>\r\n \t
        3. subculture<\/li>\r\n \t
        4. high culture<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
          \r\n
          [reveal-answer q=\"184350\"]Show Answer[\/reveal-answer]\r\n[hidden-answer a=\"184350\"]c[\/hidden-answer]<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/section><\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n[reveal-answer q=\"668805\"]Show Glossary[\/reveal-answer]\r\n[hidden-answer a=\"668805\"]\r\n
          \r\n \t
          countercultures:<\/dt>\r\n \t
          groups that reject and oppose society\u2019s widely accepted cultural patterns<\/dd>\r\n<\/dl>\r\n
          \r\n \t
          high culture:<\/dt>\r\n \t
          the cultural patterns of a society\u2019s elite<\/dd>\r\n<\/dl>\r\n
          \r\n \t
          popular culture:<\/dt>\r\n<\/dl>\r\n
          \r\n \t
          mainstream, widespread patterns among a society\u2019s population<\/dd>\r\n<\/dl>\r\n
          \r\n \t
          subcultures:<\/dt>\r\n \t
          groups that share a specific identification, apart from a society\u2019s majority, even as the members exist within a larger society<\/dd>\r\n<\/dl>\r\n[\/hidden-answer]\r\n\r\n<\/section>","rendered":"
          \n

          High Culture and Popular Culture<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
          \n

          Do you prefer listening to opera or hip hop music? Do you like watching horse racing or NASCAR? Do you read books of poetry or celebrity magazines? In each pair, one type of entertainment is considered high-brow and the other low-brow. Sociologists use the term high culture<\/span><\/strong> to describe the pattern of cultural experiences and attitudes that exist in the highest class segments of a society. People often associate high culture with intellectualism, political power, and prestige. In America, high culture also tends to be associated with wealth. Events considered high culture can be expensive and formal\u2014attending a ballet, seeing a play, or listening to a live symphony performance.<\/p>\n

          The term popular culture<\/span><\/strong> refers to the pattern of cultural experiences and attitudes that exist in mainstream society. Popular culture events might include a parade, a baseball game, or the season finale of a television show. Rock and pop music\u2014\u201cpop\u201d is short for \u201cpopular\u201d\u2014are part of popular culture. Popular culture is often expressed and spread via commercial media such as radio, television, movies, the music industry, publishers, and corporate-run websites. Unlike high culture, popular culture is known and accessible to most people. You can share a discussion of favorite football teams with a new coworker or comment on American Idol<\/em> when making small talk in line at the grocery store. But if you tried to launch into a deep discussion on the classical Greek play Antigone<\/em>, few members of U.S. society today would be familiar with it.<\/p>\n

          Although high culture may be viewed as superior to popular culture, the labels of high culture and popular culture vary over time and place. Shakespearean plays, considered pop culture when they were written, are now part of our society\u2019s high culture. Five hundred years from now, will our descendants associate Breaking Bad<\/em> with the cultural elite?<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

          \n

          Subculture and Counterculture<\/h2>\n

          A subculture<\/span><\/strong> is just what it sounds like\u2014a smaller cultural group within a larger culture; people of a subculture are part of the larger culture but also share a specific identity within a smaller group.<\/p>\n

          Thousands of subcultures exist within the United States. Ethnic and racial groups share the language, food, and customs of their heritage. Other subcultures are united by shared experiences. Biker culture revolves around a dedication to motorcycles. Some subcultures are formed by members who possess traits or preferences that differ from the majority of a society\u2019s population. The body modification community embraces aesthetic additions to the human body, such as tattoos, piercings, and certain forms of plastic surgery. In the United States, adolescents often form subcultures to develop a shared youth identity. Alcoholics Anonymous offers support to those suffering from alcoholism. But even as members of a subculture band together, they still identify with and participate in the larger society.<\/p>\n

          Sociologists distinguish subcultures from countercultures<\/span><\/strong>, which are a type of subculture that rejects some of the larger culture\u2019s norms and values. In contrast to subcultures, which operate relatively smoothly within the larger society, countercultures might actively defy larger society by developing their own set of rules and norms to live by, sometimes even creating communities that operate outside of greater society.<\/p>\n

          Cults, a word derived from culture, are also considered counterculture group. The group \u201cYearning for Zion\u201d (YFZ) in Eldorado, Texas, existed outside the mainstream and the limelight, until its leader was accused of statutory rape and underage marriage. The sect\u2019s formal norms clashed too severely to be tolerated by U.S. law, and in 2008, authorities raided the compound and removed more than two hundred women and children from the property.<\/p>\n

          \n

          The Evolution of American Hipster Subculture<\/h3>\n

          Skinny jeans, chunky glasses, and T-shirts with vintage logos\u2014the American hipster is a recognizable figure in the modern United States. Based predominately in metropolitan areas, sometimes clustered around hotspots such as the Williamsburg neighborhood in New York City, hipsters define themselves through a rejection of the mainstream. As a subculture, hipsters spurn many of the values and beliefs of U.S. culture and prefer vintage clothing to fashion and a bohemian lifestyle to one of wealth and power. While hipster culture may seem to be the new trend among young, middle-class youth, the history of the group stretches back to the early decades of the 1900s.<\/p>\n

          Where did the hipster culture begin? In the early 1940s, jazz music was on the rise in the United States. Musicians were known as \u201chepcats\u201d and had a smooth, relaxed quality that went against upright, mainstream life. Those who were \u201chep\u201d or \u201chip\u201d lived by the code of jazz, while those who were \u201csquare\u201d lived according to society\u2019s rules. The idea of a \u201chipster\u201d was born.<\/p>\n

          The hipster movement spread, and young people, drawn to the music and fashion, took on attitudes and language derived from the culture of jazz. Unlike the vernacular of the day, hipster slang was purposefully ambiguous. When hipsters said, \u201cIt\u2019s cool, man,\u201d they meant not that everything was good, but that it was the way it was.
          \n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

          \"A<\/p>\n

          In the 1940s, U.S. hipsters were associated with the \u201ccool\u201d culture of jazz. (Photo courtesy of William P. Gottlieb\/Ira and Leonore S. Gershwin Fund Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

          By the 1950s, the jazz culture was winding down and many traits of hepcat culture were becoming mainstream. A new subculture was on the rise. The \u201cBeat Generation,\u201d a title coined by writer Jack Kerouac, were anticonformist and antimaterialistic. They were writers who listened to jazz and embraced radical politics. They bummed around, hitchhiked the country, and lived in squalor.<\/p>\n

          The lifestyle spread. College students, clutching copies of Kerouac\u2019s On the Road<\/em>, dressed in berets, black turtlenecks, and black-rimmed glasses. Women wore black leotards and grew their hair long. Herb Caen, a San Francisco journalist, used the suffix from Sputnik 1<\/em>, the Russian satellite that orbited Earth in 1957, to dub the movement\u2019s followers \u201cBeatniks.\u201d<\/p>\n

          As the Beat Generation faded, a new, related movement began. It too focused on breaking social boundaries, but it also advocated freedom of expression, philosophy, and love. It took its name from the generations before; in fact, some theorists claim that Beats themselves coined the term to describe their children. Over time, the \u201clittle hipsters\u201d of the 1970s became known simply as \u201chippies.\u201d<\/p>\n

          \"A<\/p>\n

          Intellectual and trendy, today\u2019s hipsters define themselves through cultural irony. (Photo courtesy of Lorena Cupcake\/Wikimedia Commons)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

          Today\u2019s generation of hipsters rose out of the hippie movement in the same way that hippies rose from Beats and Beats from hepcats. Although contemporary hipsters may not seem to have much in common with 1940s hipsters, the emulation of nonconformity is still there. In 2010, sociologist Mark Greif set about investigating the hipster subculture of the United States and found that much of what tied the group members together was not based on fashion, musical taste, or even a specific point of contention with the mainstream. \u201cAll hipsters play at being the inventors or first adopters of novelties,\u201d Greif wrote. \u201cPride comes from knowing, and deciding, what\u2019s cool in advance of the rest of the world. Yet the habits of hatred and accusation are endemic to hipsters because they feel the weakness of everyone\u2019s position\u2014including their own\u201d (Greif 2010). Much as the hepcats of the jazz era opposed common culture with carefully crafted appearances of coolness and relaxation, modern hipsters reject mainstream values with a purposeful apathy.<\/p>\n

          Young people are often drawn to oppose mainstream conventions, even if in the same way that others do. Ironic, cool to the point of non-caring, and intellectual, hipsters continue to embody a subculture, while simultaneously impacting mainstream culture.
          \n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

          \n
          \n
          \n

          Further Research<\/h3>\n

          The Beats were a counterculture that birthed an entire movement of art, music, and literature\u2014much of which is still highly regarded and studied today. The man responsible for naming the generation was Jack Kerouac; however, the man responsible for introducing the world to that generation was John Clellon Holmes, a writer often lumped in with the group. In 1952 he penned an article for the New York Times Magazine<\/em> titled, \u201cThis Is the Beat Generation.\u201d Read that article and learn more about Clellon Holmes and the Beats: http:\/\/openstaxcollege.org\/l\/The-Beats<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

          \n

          Think It Over<\/h3>\n
          \n
          \n
          \n
            \n
          1. Identify several examples of popular culture and describe how they inform larger culture. How prevalent is the effect of these examples in your everyday life?<\/li>\n
          2. Consider some of the specific issues or concerns of your generation. Are any ideas countercultural? What subcultures have emerged from your generation? How have the issues of your generation expressed themselves culturally? How has your generation made its mark on society\u2019s collective culture?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
            \n

            Practice<\/h3>\n
            \n
            \n
            \n

            1. An example of high culture is ___________, whereas an example of popular culture would be ____________.<\/p>\n

              \n
            1. Dostoevsky style in film; \u201cAmerican Idol\u201d winners<\/li>\n
            2. medical marijuana; film noir<\/li>\n
            3. country music; pop music<\/li>\n
            4. political theory; sociological theory<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n
              \n
              \n
              Show Answer<\/span><\/p>\n
              a<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
              \n
              <\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n
              \n
              \n
              \n

              2. The Ku Klux Klan is an example of what part of culture?<\/p>\n

                \n
              1. Counterculture<\/li>\n
              2. Subculture<\/li>\n
              3. Multiculturalism<\/li>\n
              4. Afrocentricity<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n
                \n
                \n
                Show Answer<\/span><\/p>\n
                a<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
                \n
                <\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n
                \n
                \n
                \n

                3. Modern-day hipsters are an example of:<\/p>\n

                  \n
                1. ethnocentricity<\/li>\n
                2. counterculture<\/li>\n
                3. subculture<\/li>\n
                4. high culture<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n
                  \n
                  \n
                  Show Answer<\/span><\/p>\n
                  c<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
                  Show Glossary<\/span><\/p>\n
                  \n
                  \n
                  countercultures:<\/dt>\n
                  groups that reject and oppose society\u2019s widely accepted cultural patterns<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
                  \n
                  high culture:<\/dt>\n
                  the cultural patterns of a society\u2019s elite<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
                  \n
                  popular culture:<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
                  \n
                  mainstream, widespread patterns among a society\u2019s population<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
                  \n
                  subcultures:<\/dt>\n
                  groups that share a specific identification, apart from a society\u2019s majority, even as the members exist within a larger society<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\t\t\t
                  \n\t\t\t

                  Candela Citations<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t
                  \n\t\t\t\t\t\t
                  \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
                  CC licensed content, Shared previously<\/div>