Subculture: The Meaning of Style (New Accents) (Paperback)

~ (Author) "The chic thing is to dress in expensive tailor-made rags and all the queens are camping about in wild-boy drag..." (more)
Key Phrases: teddy boy style, spectacular subcultures, punk subculture, West Indian, Great Britain, Sex Pistols (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Complex and remarkably lucid, it's the first book dealing with punk to offer intellectual content. Hebdige is concerned with the UK's postwar, music-centred, white working-class subcultures, from teddy boys to mods and rockers to skinheads and punks.' -- Rolling Stone

Hebdiges Subculture: The Meaning of Style is so important: complex and remarkably lucid, its the first book dealing with punk to offer intellectual content. Hebdige [...] is concerned with the UKs postwar, music-centred, white working-class subcultures, from teddy boys to mods and rockers to skinheads and punks. - Rolling Stone

With enviable precision and wit Hebdige has addressed himself to a complex topic - the meanings behind the fashionable exteriors of working-class youth subcultures - approaching them with a sophisticated theoretical apparatus that combines semiotics, the sociology of devience and Marxism and come up with a very stimulating short book - Time Out

This book is an attempt to subject the various youth-protest movements of Britain in the last 15 years to the sort of Marxist, structuralist, semiotic analytical techniques propagated by, above all, Roland Barthes. The book is recommended whole-heartedly to anyone who would like fresh ideas about some of the most stimulating music of the rock era - The New York Times

Product Description

`Complex and remarkably lucid, it's the first book dealing with punk to offer intellectual content. Hebdige is concerned with the UK's postwar, music-centred, white working-class subcultures, from teddy boys to mods and rockers to skinheads and punks.' - Rolling Stone

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (March 10, 1981)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415039495
• ISBN-13: 978-0415039499
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 4.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #25,654 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #42 in	Books > Entertainment > Pop Culture > Art
  #56 in	Books > Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Sociology > Culture
  #73 in	Books > Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Anthropology > Cultural

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Art Primer, February 5, 2002

By A Customer

This book is fundmentally the the bases for anyone who is studying art theory. This books goes into how subcultures like the punk movement to hip hop and gang cultures got started and why they are important to understanding diverse social structures.

Althought this book is small it is not an easy read. I read this book four or five time before things started to sink in. After finishing this book I felt more prepared for the art going experience.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable insight into postwar subcultures, July 8, 1999

By A Customer

From mods to rastafarians this books covers the history and social significance of them all. Although heavy at the start the book levels out at a nice factual tempo providing meaning to every subculture youth movent interlinking them and weaving them with the music scene. There are a few gaps, perhaps due to lack of knowledge, which I believe are significant but have been left out. Worth a read if you are intrested in fasion, youth, sociological research or music.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars fun, interesting, complex, August 14, 2003

By	"puggysideshow" (Oakland, CA United States) - See all my reviews

this book takes an awesome and serious look at punk as a social and cultural phenomenon, and examines the roots that made punk into what it was. it is a very enlightening read, but is the kind of book you must read in the front and the back at the same time to have it all sink in. hebdige uses a number of endnotes throughout the book, which made me have to jump back and forth to understand what he was saying. i think a second reading would provide an even deeper understanding-- there were definitely times on the first read when i had to reread passages. i definitely recommend this book and have greatly enjoyed it.