Short description
Sarah Thornton highlights the values of authenticity and hipness and explores the complex hierarchies that emerge within the domain of popular culture.
Long description
Focusing on youth cultures that revolve around dance clubs and raves in Great Britain and the U.S., Sarah Thornton highlights the values of authenticity and hipness and explores the complex hierarchies that emerge within the domain of popular culture. She portrays club cultures as taste cultures brought together by micro-media like flyers and listings, transformed into self-conscious subcultures by such niche media as the music and style press, and sometimes recast as movements with the aid of such mass media as tabloid newspaper front pages. She also traces changes in the recording medium from a marginal entertainment in the 50s to the clubs and raves of the 90s.
Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Thornton coins the term subcultural capital to make sense of distinctions made by cool youth, noting particularly their disparagement of the mainstream against which they measure their alternative cultural worth. Well supported with case studies, readable, and innovative, Club Cultures will become a key text in cultural and media studies and in the sociology of culture.
Review
Skipping from discos to acid houses to raves, the world within the scene is dissected by theoretical insight and first hand experience . . . Thornton never falls short on hipster jargon. --Bikini