Sunday, December 2, 2012
Key Concepts of Subcultures
I will probably post more once I think about this topic in more depth, but the following things have stood out for me throughout this year:
1. The youth subculture not only lets us examine the youth itself during a certain time period, but also of the dominant culture. This is to say that the subcultures and the dominant culture have a hand-to-hand relationship, despite their outer disdain (For most cases) towards each other.
2. The credibility of sources proved to be crucial in our understanding of the subcultures. If a scholar who was well educated in a 2nd-person manner (Rather than a personal experience) wrote a paper about a certain subculture, we as students of the class would be cautious to approach this paper with trust. Rather, we would label this as a view by the dominant culture.
3. With the introduction of the fast-paced technology that continues to grow and evolve every second, not only have new subcultures emerged (ex. Gaming subculture), but old subcultures themselves now have access to a cheap and fast form of communication, something that many have struggled years before.
4. As time passes by, subcultures seem to become a part of the dominant culture (ex. Hip-Hop), or vice versa (ex. Gaming). This, to me, tells me that the relationship between the dominant culture and subcultures is fluid; it will never stay constant, but change. We can then observe this change to observe the society itself of that time.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Since I have been unable to post for the semester (all I can do is comment, similarly to Rebecca, not exactly certain as to why), I will put the final blog prompt here.
ReplyDeleteWithout doubt the most important thing that I have learned is the preparation for the research paper, and although I do not know if this could be considered a key concept of the course, it will most certainly be incredibly useful to me (the three part system) in the upcoming semesters.
I also feel that the enforcement of being objective the entire time, whether in understanding a specific subculture or searching for viable sources, is pertinent to learning. Not being blinded by the dominant culture or the media is key to higher learning, and I admit that at the beginning of this course I was incredibly subjective in my viewpoints. I feel as though from this class I have learned several tools that will be used for the immediate future, as to the zero that I have learned in the other classes.
I believe (and agree with others in the class) that the current mainstream is constantly shifting, and becoming more and more difficult to accurately pin down. The media currently broadcasts so much information about dozens of cultures, combined with the internet that gives people an infinite amount of knowledge at their fingertips to explore whatever they so desire. Consequently I do not believe that I can ultimately define the dominant culture, as it seems that the white christian male that has dominated the past generations is steadily fading on account of the age of liberalism. Regardless, I think that they are still the most "dominant" culture, despite that fact that they are walking on incredibly thin ice. The resistance from other cultures will soon overtake them, it's only a matter of time at this point.
ReplyDeleteRegarding Kevin's second point, I feel as though this has been one of the biggest takeaways from this class. Know your sources. We read many texts and thankfully, we did not always take them at face value. We learned to validate a source, finding places where ideas were useful and other places where the ideas seemed forcefully inserted.
ReplyDeleteUsing social science research as the vehicle, we were able to develop our own research abilities. Researching people's actions and affiliations is way more difficult than researching a scientific hypothesis or other experimental work. Despite the challenges, I feel we were exposed to a whole new field of study and through it gained important insights going forward. For the freshmen, remember what we did because these skills will come in handy for all other GenEds, especially Mosaic. For me, my field is music education and will undoubtedly be taking a new approach to my investigations into music research and educational theory,