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Who are we? Do commonalities or differences define our social existence? What unites us when we live in the same society? Or are we islands in the sea called society? "Society" is at the center of sociology. The concept of "unity and solidarity" is an arbitrary analysis tool that forcibly binds these islands together. Why shouldn't it be a desire whose discourse creates conflict instead of harmony? Although much thought has been given to society and sociality, there is very little knowledge of difference, why? One of the reasons for the endless conflicts inherent in sociality, which is frequently designed as a project, is "diversity". Couldn't it be lack of knowledge? Perhaps what needs to be examined now is "partnership". culture not, “difference” It is culture! Well, what is the "subculture" stuck between these discussions? why?
According to Chris Jenks, the concept of subculture contains an important paradox that social sciences must confront. Although the idea of subculture isolates difference, it describes the commonality at the center of difference. Jenks starts with the analysis of this concept within social sciences; Tönnies reveals the prehistory of the subculture with the archaeological excavation he conducted within the framework of master theorists such as Durkheim and Marx and Weber. While the last structural trace of the concept is being traced with Parsons' sociology of systems, the groundbreaking works of Stuart Hall and the Birmingham School complete the map of the concept with Althusser and Gramsci's understanding of ideology. In this map that Jenks revealed, the taboos of primitive societies, organic and mechanical structures, internal structures, etc. Intertwined systems, lumps overlooked by capitalism, socialized selves, a lively city, junkies who can't hold on, miserable immigrants, avant-garde bohemians, open-minded mafia bosses, rebellious young people. , there is a world of lost others and a deeply profound border experience.
Ignoring this border experience reveals the weakness of the concept of subculture by linking it to postmodernity: According to Jenks, making sense of difference requires limiting it, and only the social can determine this limit. Just as postmodernity tries to erase modern borders by multiplying them, subculture tries in vain to take back the borders of common culture. The concept of subculture, says Jenks, has never become a useful tool in the hands of any theorist; On the contrary, it enabled the theorist to escape from the causality of the social and isolate difference where he was stuck. To explain the social with difference is to disregard the promise of explaining the social with the social, to exclude the different from the common world.
Taking subcultures as new sources of identity, new signifiers of difference; For those who want to rethink difference through commonalities and not erase the other from the map of the self...
“A book that seriously and carefully examines the concept of subculture... subtle and insightful.”Jim McGuigan
