Club Cultures is a highly innovative study of contemporary culture. Focusing on the youth cultures that revolve around dance clubs and raves, Sarah Thornton interrogates the values of authenticity and hipness and explores the complex hierarchies that emerge within the domain of popular culture.
Using a rich combination of methods, Thornton paints a picture of of club cultures as “taste cultures” brought together by micro-media (such as flyers and listings), transformed into self-conscious “subcultures” by niche media (like the music and style press), and sometimes recast as “movements” with the aid of mass media (like tabloid front pages). She also analyses the changing status of the medium of recording, from a marginal, second-class entertainment in the 1950s to the much celebrated, dominant form of clubs and raves in the 1990s. Drawing from the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Thornton coins the term “subcultural capital” to make sense to the distinctions made by “cool” youth, paying particular attention to their disparagement of the “mainstream” against which they measure their alternative cultural worth.
Published by Polity in the UK and Wesleyan University Press in the USA in 1995.
Italian translation published as Dai Club ai Rave: Musica, media e capitale sottoculturale by Feltrinelli, Milano, 1998.
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