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Under-Connected: Youth Subcultures, Resistance and Sociability in the Internet Age

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Hebdige and Subculture in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

Dick Hebdige’s Subculture (1979) has long been held up as one of the most influential theories of youth subcultures in cultural studies. The first book of the kind focusing on punk, Hebdige’s milestone proved itself decisive to understand how white working-class youth subcultures, in postwar Britain, defied social normalization and hegemony. In this chapter and based on data from an all-embracing study on Portuguese punk over the last 40 years, we aim at demonstrating how the concept of subculture translates to a different time and society, outside the British context. Taking subculture as a form of resistance to dominant groups and ideology, represented by punk style as a chaotic mishmash of visual, aesthetic, musical and social meanings, Hebdige’s notion shall be the object of thorough review, in light of recent social transformations. This pioneering application, now tested on a Portuguese site, will help nurture an understanding of similarities and differences, distances and proximities, while allowing for an explanatory opportunity for post-subcultural theories in a backdrop of change and transience, of neo-tribalism and scenes. At a time of growing economic and social flexibility, stress shall be put on discussing the complex processes of youth identity construction around punk resistance. Unlike pre-internet societies, where identities were structured in regard to univocal references and community traditions, such processes are now of multifarious nature, hence the relevance of grasping online sociability’s: participation in discussion groups; collaboration in e-zines; promotion of band and event pages; as well as political and civic participation in new social movements. Thus being, a set of 217 in-depth interviews with key players of Portuguese punk will foster all-around discussion on the importance of virtual sociability as new level of juvenile resistance—the privileged setting for reconsidering Hebdige’s contribution, 35 years later.

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Acknowledgement

The publication was supported by FCT—Foundation for Science and Technology, within the scope of UID/SOC/00727/2018.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Paula Guerra

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  1. Paula Guerra
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK

    Keith Gildart

  2. Ealing School of Art, Design and Media, University of West London, London, UK

    Anna Gough-Yates

  3. School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK

    Sian Lincoln

  4. London Metropolitan University, London, UK

    Bill Osgerby

  5. School of History, Art History and Philosophy, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

    Lucy Robinson

  6. University of East Anglia, Norwich, Norfolk, UK

    John Street

  7. University of the West of England, Bristol, UK

    Peter Webb

  8. Department of History, University of Reading, Reading, UK

    Matthew Worley

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Guerra, P. (2020). Under-Connected: Youth Subcultures, Resistance and Sociability in the Internet Age. In: Gildart, K., et al. Hebdige and Subculture in the Twenty-First Century. Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28475-6_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28475-6_10

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-28474-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-28475-6

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