From Subculture to Post Subculture

A lecture introducing the key studies in subcultural and post-subcultural literature will take place on Tuesday 30 May in The Parkside Building's Lecture Theatre.

Hosted by Professor Andy Bennett, an experienced academic with extensive conference and publishing experience, the lecture will take place from 5 - 6.30pm in P350. The lecture will summarise the critical tenets of subcultural and post-subcultural theory, provide an overview of key critical debates emerging from this literature and offer some observations on potential future directions for youth cultural studies.

The purpose of the lecture is to review and evaluate the key tenets of subcultural and, latterly, post-subcultural theory, as these have characterised the academic study of style and music-based youth cultures.

Between the early 1970s and late 1990s, the academic study of youth culture was heavily dominated by the concept of spectacular subculture. Emerging from the cultural studies work of theorists based at the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), spectacular subculture was interpreted as a cultural form within which the historical process of class struggle continued through working class youths' appropriation and symbolic re-working of fashion items. In the 2000s, this concept was challenged by a new group of youth culture researchers, thus creating a 'post-subcultural' era of youth.

For more information please email asya.draganova@bcu.ac.uk.