ANTH 2041 - Subculture to Pop Culture: Fans, Fashion & Music

This course examines the central role that popular culture plays in people's everyday lives in diverse contexts around the world – from the margins to the mainstream. It does so through the study of subcultures, a term used to describe groups that are often seen to be deviant or other. It uses case-studies to explore the origins of subcultural research and contemporary critiques posed by post-subcultural and digital researchers. Groups explored across the course include fans, music communities like Punks, Mods and Hip-Hop artists; heavily tattooed people; style-based Internet collectives (core aesthetics), Graffiti Writers and Skaters. Themes covered include debates about the commercialisation of youth subcultures; if and how social media and streaming are re-shaping subcultures and music consumption; embodied understandings of fashion and tattooing; and the relationship between age and subcultural participation. The course investigates how theorists from cultural studies, media and other disciplines have understood subcultures / popular culture, highlighting what anthropology contributes to these fields. It demonstrates that people form meaningful collective identities through the production and consumption of fashion, music, fandom, and material culture.