Abstract
Using bodybuilders and skinheads/neo-Nazis as two rather diverse examples of subcultures, the present study theoretically explores our understanding of subculture and common culture. The study aims to explore how the concept of subculture can be used analytically in relation to processes of normalization and marginalization. The focus is on the historical, symbolic, and biographical relation between the subculture, the subcultural response, and sociopolitical transformations in society and culture. We are interested in understanding the processes through which, for example, bodybuilding has moved back and forth, over time, between a subcultural position and a more common fitness culture. In parallel to this, we are also interested in how subcultures centered on skinheads, neo-Nazis, and right-wing extremists influence and are connected to more general political transformations and opinions in contemporary society, blurring the distinction between subculture and common culture. The results indicate a complex relation between subcultures and the mainstreaming of certain values, opinions, and practices.
The politics of youth culture is a politics of metaphor: it deals in the currency of signs and is, thus, always ambiguous, because the subcultural milieu has been constructed underneath the authorized discourses, in defiance of the multiple disciplines of the family, the school, and the workplace. Subculture takes shape in the space between surveillance and the evasion of surveillance; it translates the fact of being under scrutiny into the pleasure of being watched. It is a way of “hiding in the light” (Hebdige, 1988, p. 35).
Hebdige locates subcultures and the subcultural response somewhere in between affirmation and refusal, commercialization and revolt, and resistance and conformity. Hence, subcultures are not automatically associated with a “genuine” resistance to societal structures. Instead, they are understood as occupying and representing an ambivalent and complex position in society.
There are, of course, numerous ways of defining and positioning subcultures. The concept has often been linked to notions of spectacular and colorful youth cultures, such as punk culture, goths, mods, rockers, and skinheads. Subcultures also have a long history of being described and defined in terms of “deviance”—something alien/outlandish (Burke & Sunley, 1998; Gelder, 2007; Nayak & Kehily, 2013). Of course, there is always a certain degree of disparity between specific subcultures and society at large. But this does not mean that the distinction between cultural elements that are perceived as mainstream or common, on one hand, and elements/symbols/signs that are perceived as subcultural, on the other, is eternal. Rather, subcultures and common culture change over time, and subcultures tend to become incorporated into what is referred to as mainstream—or common—culture. For example, during the 1960s, the two discourses youth as problem and youth as fun merged into youth as image (Hebdige, 1988). The politics of youth is thus played out as a spectacle, and as consumption and lifestyles. Subcultures and youth cultures are, in other words, constantly being drawn into a circulation of different signs, images, and signified bodies.
Subcultures are both objects of governmentality and sites for pleasure, desire, and attention. The contradictory image of subcultures, captured very well by the description of them as “hiding in the light” in the quotation above, raises some questions as to their status, especially concerning the relation between specific subcultures and society in general. The term mainstream has often been used to capture youth in general, but there are of course reasons to be skeptical of this way of framing and generalizing about youth. Subcultures are not homogeneous and coherent, nor are youth in general. This does not mean, however, that they are fluid, liquid, and ephemeral. Rather, what is commonly referred to as mainstream or common culture is complex and constantly in transformation, at the same time as it is also possible—paradoxically enough—to understand mainstream culture in terms of hegemonic cultural formations.
In the present article, we will explore and elaborate on the concept of subculture. We will use two rather different examples of subcultures, namely, bodybuilding and skinheads/neo-Nazis. We will depart from these two examples, which will be presented as cases or examples of subcultures, to present a theoretical exploration of our understanding of the concept of subculture and common culture as well as the processes of marginalization and normalization. The main aim of the article is thus not to add new knowledge or research on these subcultures per se; nor is the article to be understood as a comparison of these two cultures, aimed at shedding light on their differences and similarities. Instead, we aim to explore the possibility of using the concept of subculture in relation to the idea of a normalization of certain subcultural values, ideals and opinions. In the section on methodology, we will further explain the rational for choosing these two subcultures, and not others.
Our focus is on the historical, symbolic, and biographical relation between the subculture and the subcultural response, on one hand, and sociopolitical transformations in society and culture, on the other. More precisely, we are interested in understanding how, for example, bodybuilding has moved back and forth, over time, between a subcultural position and a more common fitness culture. We will here focus on the more competitive and extreme aspects of this lifestyle-forming subcultural practice, and on how individuals through measures such as muscle building, intentional dehydration, and elimination of body fat prepare their bodies to be evaluated by a panel of judges in bodybuilding competitions. As a parallel to this, we are also interested in how subcultures centered on skinheads, neo-Nazis, and right-wing extremists influence and are connected to more general political transformations and opinions in society. Although the focus of the present article is mainly theoretical, our ambition is also to contribute to methodological innovations in empirical analyses of contemporary and influential subcultures. We will focus on and explore the following areas in particular:
While the first two research questions will mainly be addressed in the “Exploring Two Subcultures” section, where we present our two examples of subcultures, the third question will be explored in the “Conclusion and Discussion” section. In the following section, we will initially explain the conceptual framework of the article by focusing on the concept of subculture. Thereafter, we will present some methodological considerations.
Conceptual Framework—Mainstreaming Subcultures
The concept of subculture has a long history in the social sciences. It has been used to define and describe deviant behavior, but also to talk about youth culture in terms of resistance to and subversion of norms. According to Blackman (2014), subcultures are often considered barometers of contemporariness and expressions of underlying structural and cultural transformations in society. One problem in many previous studies of subculture has been a tendency to exclusively focus on homologies, and on the ways in which subcultural styles come together to form homogeneous totalities (Fornäs, 1995, p. 112). Clearly, such tendencies need to be counteracted by attending to the differences, tensions, and contradictions within and between subcultures and groups, which more recent studies of social relations have shown constitute an increasingly important element of late-modern lifestyles (Fornäs, 1995; Martin, 2009). In the present article, we will not repeat the ongoing discussion on different theoretical approaches to subcultures presented by different scholars, but instead look more closely at some of the dividing lines in discourses on subcultures and subcultural responses (Martin, 2009; Muggleton, 2005; Muggleton & Weinzierl, 2003; Shildrick & MacDonald, 2006).
First, one central discussion on subcultures focuses on whether the concept is viewed as transitional, fluid, and transformative or, alternatively, as a more stable and homogeneous phenomenon. Criticism of the theories of subcultures coming from the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) targeted the centrality that was attributed to social class as well as CCCS scholars’ attempts to find homologies within subcultures. The idea that youth cultures could be read as symbolic attempts to solve the problems of adult culture, caused by transformations of the class society in Britain, was challenged. To capture the more fleeting and mediated youth cultures of the 1990s, concepts such as neo-tribes, postsubcultures, and lifestyles were introduced (Robards & Bennett, 2011; Williams, 2006). This discussion was, and still is, often strongly related to digital media and to “do-it-yourself” (DIY) youth movements (McArthur, 2009). As a reaction to this turn toward postsubcultures, attempts have been made to find a balance between CCCS models of subcultures and postsubcultural theories (Martin, 2009; Muggleton, 2005; Muggleton & Weinzierl, 2003; Shildrick & MacDonald, 2006). Today we are also seeing a return to class, and to new attempts to explore the relations between subcultural style and taste and societal transformations.
Second, subcultures are frequently seen as either expressions of deviance or as creative symbolic responses and reactions to dominant societal values. In theories of subcultures, we often find an intrinsic distinction between subcultures and mainstream culture, or between subcultures and common culture. Either way, there is a varyingly complex relation between what is “sub” and what is dominant. According to Hebdige (1979), subcultures are successively incorporated into and consumed by mainstream culture. However, Hodkinson (2002) argued that this way of approaching the relation between sub and dominance tends to undervalue the contribution of the subculture. Following Hodkinson (2002), subcultures are not homogeneous and stable phenomena, but have a certain infrastructure and content. Subcultures offer a meaningful identity, fulfillment, cultural and political participation, and a transgression of dominant norms. Thus, there is often a high level of distinctiveness and stability, in the sense of collective identity, fostered within subcultures (Wheaton, 2007). Subcultures are frequently spectacular, but there is also a strong relation to the mundane and to the youth culture at large (Gelder, 1997/2005; Gelder, 2007). The visibility, clarity, and pleasure expressed in subcultural styles and communities also serve to attract and recruit young people to these kinds of groups. To keep attracting young people to the subculture, it always tends to keep a certain distance to mainstream culture, and although it is often incorporated into the common culture, it also reinvents itself and returns from the oppressed in various subversive and abject forms.
Finally, subcultural research has often taken for granted that this is exclusively a youth cultural phenomenon. Yet today punk culture, for example, cuts cross several generations. Moreover, many influential subcultures are constituted on an age hierarchy, where older members serve as founders and important role models. When we study subcultures, we are also focusing on the infrastructure of these communities.
To sum up, in line with our research questions, we will focus on the relation between subcultures and societal and sociopolitical structures, using two carefully selected subcultures. We will use these subcultures to explore the dynamic relation between subcultural content and identities and how the subcultures also influence and partly contribute to forming more general cultural and social structures, as well as the generational aspects of subcultures. Inspired by earlier discussions of subcultures, we will feed some of the ideas emerging from such discussions into our exploration of two selected subcultures.
Methodology and Research Design
Our investigation of the two cases we chose to deepen and develop our exploration of subcultures in contemporary Western societies will be based on interviews and research on these subcultures and on our readings of secondary literature. Inspired by Resistance Through Rituals, we will use ideas from this work to structure our analysis (Hall & Jefferson, 1976). In their study, Hall and Jefferson distinguish between three aspects or analytical levels: structures, cultures, and biographies. We will modify these aspects and adjust them to our study. Here, structures will be used to discuss the formation of the subculture in relation to class, societal changes, and cultural transformation. We are inspired by the CCCS approach to subcultures, but also by postsubcultural theories that point out the importance of social media in the formation of contemporary subcultures. Cultures will be used to explore the symbolic and corporeal landscape of subcultures. Biographies will help us study how individual trajectories and narratives are intertwined with and connected to the formation of subcultures. Consequently, using interview excerpts, we will capture how members of subcultures position and understand their lifestyle choices and cultural community in relation to the surrounding world.
As stated above, the present article should primarily be understood as theoretical and explorative in nature, although it rests in part on comprehensive empirical material gathered in different research projects on bodybuilding and neo-Nazism by the authors over a period of several years. Here, the empirical material is mainly used as an inspiration for our more extensive and exploratory theoretical work. The rationale for choosing these two case studies and examples is partly related to the authors’ research interests, and partly to our collaborative discussions on how to theoretically approach two—in many ways—totally different subcultures. Discovering that there actually exist a number of similarities and homologies regarding how these two subcultures develop, transform, and change led us on to writing this article, as well as the ambition to explore possibilities of developing subcultural theory in general.
The first subcultural case is the bodybuilding and fitness culture, and the material used comes from a larger ethnographic study on bodybuilding and gym culture. Thirty-two competitive bodybuilders participated in the study. The participants were mainly Swedish, although bodybuilders from other countries, such as the United States, also contributed their stories. This extensive empirical material have previously been analyzed in several articles and a book (Andreasson & Johansson, 2014).
The second case study is based on interviews from an ongoing study on pedagogical strategies used to counteract Nazism and racism in the classroom, and evaluation interviews from an intervention program aimed at preventing recruitment to White power gangs. The sample consists of five interviews with former Nazi activists (conducted from October to December 2015 in the pedagogical strategy study) and another 12 interviews conducted in the intervention program (total 17 interviews). This is a part of an ongoing research project, and no results have been published earlier.
In our presentation, we have no desire to try to separate the empirical material and secondary literature from the theoretical and conceptual frameworks. Rather we are treating and understanding our empirical material as already saturated in theory.
Using two diverse examples of subcultures, our ambition is to develop a theoretical and methodological understanding of and approach to subcultures. Regarding theory, we will focus on how to approach the concept in terms of (a) subcultures’ inner dynamics and structure, (b) dynamic relations between subcultures and common culture, and (c) generational dynamics. Regarding methodology, as stated earlier, we will look more closely at how we can investigate different subcultures through (a) structures, (b) cultures, and (c) biographies. Whereas our theoretical investigation will lead us to the common dynamics and mechanisms in different subcultures, our methodological exploration will open up new ways of approaching this field of research. Our descriptions of the two subcultures will by necessity be quite short and schematic, and our aim is not to deliver complete case studies, but instead to indicate possible ways of writing about and presenting subcultural transformations in contemporary society.
Exploring Two Subcultures
From Bodybuilding to the Fitness Revolution
The idea of competent and muscular bodies found in contemporary fitness culture can be traced back to what used to be called physical culture in the late 19th century and to the teachings of the forefathers of bodybuilding (Budd, 1997). As a cultural phenomenon, however, contemporary bodybuilding is more connected to what happened in the 1970s, at Gold’s gym, Venice Beach, California (McKenzie, 2013). In a relatively short period of time, Gold’s Gym blossomed and developed from a small, shabby, subcultural, and marginal gym into a 400-strong global franchise (Gaines & Butler, 1974; Klein, 1993; Liokaftos, 2012; Luciano, 2001).
The interest in bodybuilding, workout techniques, aerobics, and fitness in general exploded starting from the 1970s and entering into the 1980s. Gradually, the understanding of this male dominated culture was renegotiated, and women also became involved. There are, of course, manifold explanations as to why this body-centered culture transformed. Susan Jeffords situates this transformation in the historical period of Reagan and Thatcher, war and nationalist movements.
The Reagan era was an era of bodies. From the anxieties about Reagan’s age and the appearance of cancerous spots on his nose; to the profitable craze in aerobics and exercise; to the moulding of a former Mr. Universe into the biggest box-office draw of the decade; to the conservative agenda to outlaw abortion; to the identification of “value” through an emphasis on drug use, sexuality, and child-bearing; to the thematized aggression against persons with AIDS—these articulations of bodies constituted the imaginary of the Reagan agenda and the site of its materialization. (Jeffords, 1994, p. 24)
The development within bodybuilding, from the 1970s and onward, can be interpreted as a zeitgeist and as an example of how a subcultural practice is gradually both globalized and normalized in the common culture. The development toward a global culture is accentuated by the mediatization of society, and the development of a global business enterprise. During this period of time (the 1980s and 1990s), both men and women are involved, and previous connotations to masculine working-class bodies are gradually replaced by a more diffuse and broad inclusion of both working- and middle-class participants. This does not mean, of course, that all class and gender distinctions have been erased from the bodybuilding culture, but merely that from being a more exclusive sport, there has been a movement toward mass participation in fitness. Sassatelli (2010) captured this development in the following way:
Since the 1970s there has been a marked increase in the number of exercise premises presenting themselves in a new guise. They have addressed an increasingly large, mixed public. They have shifted the notion of the gym from a sub-cultural passion to a mass leisure activity, intertwined with pop culture. (p. 17)
During the 1980s and 1990s, there was a massive development in the gym culture. For example, in 1991, there were 300 fitness gyms in Sweden, and approximately 250,000 individuals exercised in these gyms, whereas at the beginning of 1980s, gyms were few and visited primarily by a small group of enthusiasts and bodybuilder fans. However, parallel to this development, the reputation and popularity of bodybuilding have been negatively affected by the increasing use of performance-/image-enhancing drugs, and the health problems associated with so-called distorted body images. As a consequence, bodybuilding has gradually become disconnected from the more general development and trend of fitness gyms, and from a conception of the gym as a place for everyone and a mass leisure activity (Smith Maguire, 2008). This recent popularization of somewhat extreme cultural body ideals is an interesting period of time in which the techniques of building muscles and sculpting a perfect body were idealized, at the same time as the people embodying these techniques—bodybuilders—were not (Pope, Phillips, & Olivardia, 2000). One of our informants captures this process of marginalization, in which some ideals, values, and knowledge on how to train the body are recognized and normalized, while other aspects of the culture are dismissed.
Well I think it’s a subculture everywhere now. Who wants to look like a bodybuilder? I think here in the US, especially in the organization here, we are moving into bikini and figure competitions. They are trying to get a little more mainstream, like men’s physique for example. Obviously all these foreign countries are copying what we are doing here. Especially in European countries I think that the fit model look is much more desirable. Look at the numbers of men’s physique and bikini competitors; they far outnumber everyone else, as far as the numbers of people participating. But I think it’s much more tolerance here, aside from anabolic steroids that they love to arrest people for, no one is like profiling people because they are big, and say let’s arrest him cause he must be doing something wrong you know. In Sweden, you know they can arrest you if think you are taking something or if you look too big. It’s really bad. (David Palumbo)
David “Dave” Palumbo is a retired American elite level bodybuilder, living in New York. He is currently running a successful company within the bodybuilding domain, selling supplements, and producing radio and Internet shows covering relevant news and events from a global bodybuilding scene. He also coaches professional bodybuilders and figure and fitness competitors and can thus be said to have high symbolic capital within the bodybuilding culture. Following his narrative, it becomes clear how bodybuilding has successively been detached from a more general fitness trend.
The cultural and gradual separation between bodybuilding as a subculture and fitness does not mean that these phenomena have become two different activities and lifestyles. These conceptions of exercise and lifestyles are partly disconnected from each other and partly becoming increasingly dependent on each other. This double-edginess can also be exemplified by one of the most influential persons in bodybuilding culture, namely, Arnold Schwarzenegger. On one hand, after his career as a bodybuilder, Schwarzenegger became involved in mainstream films, the Hollywood industry, and he also became highly influential in American politics. This was central to imbuing excessive muscularity with the hyper-visibility that presented the bodybuilder as a figure of staggering power (Locks & Richardson, 2012). On the other hand, at the peak of his career, Schwarzenegger was the greatest bodybuilder competitor ever seen, and as such he was clearly viewed, to some extent, as freakish by the standards of parts of the general public. According to Locks and Richardson (2012), Schwarzenegger’s impact on the culture was to introduce a postclassic aesthetic era, in which competitive bodybuilders could no longer be compared with Greek art, which symbolizes proportion, symmetry, and order.
It is ironic that the very person who helped provide bodybuilding with its greatest publicity since the turn of the last century should be largely responsible for encouraging the aesthetic that has severed professional bodybuilding from much of its classical lineage, thereby promoting a look that would ostracize it again from the mainstream that it (and Schwarzenegger) had just been admitted to . . . Many outside professional bodybuilding, who are not used to seeing such bodies (particularly during periods of competition), feel that professional bodybuilders take the ideals of bodily perfection to such an extreme that these very attributes begin to reverse themselves. The mesomorphic body shape, which came to be so prized in the visual discourse, has become a “freakish” image that has shock value. (Locks & Richardson, 2012, pp. 15-16)
Over time, bodybuilding and its status have changed and transformed. At the beginning of the 20th century and again in the 1970s, bodybuilding attained high status, and in certain countries, for example, the United States, it was not at all a subculture, but rather something of a masculine mass movement. Today, bodybuilding is often described and studied as a subculture, associated with extreme bodies and drugs (Liokaftos, 2012; McGrath & Chananie-Hill, 2009; Monaghan, 2001).
At the same time, bodybuilders are highly visible in common culture (Bridges, 2009). A large number of international magazines are devoted entirely to the art of bodybuilding. There are many books and manuals on the market that offer training programs for bodybuilding, and through different organizations, such as The International Federation of Bodybuilding and Fitness (IFBB), bodybuilding has become a global enterprise and sport that clearly extends beyond the concept of subculture. Pumping iron at the gym certainly characterizes the lifestyle of the bodybuilder, but may also be part of the lifestyle of the average person trying to improve his or her own health. Moreover, elite athletes also commonly use bodybuilding techniques in their attempts to become better at their sport and more competitive. Consequently, although contemporary representations of bodybuilding bodies are not unproblematic and the bodybuilder often is viewed as something of a freak in everyday life situations, the huge muscular male and female body, the lifestyle this body represents, the techniques used and developed within bodybuilding, the discipline, the supplementary knowledge, and more are also highly valued/idealized in contemporary society. This becomes very clear when we look at the development of fitness culture in recent decades and the techniques used to strengthen the body within modern competitive sports. It could be argued that the freakishness of contemporary bodybuilding might actually be better characterized as a societal development than a subcultural one. In sum: The fitness revolution—evolving as a mass enterprise, washing off the stamp of the more grotesque parts of bodybuilding culture, the drugs, and the extreme cult of the huge muscular body—has also led in one respect to the development of a more uniform and homogeneous global gym and fitness culture, and in another respect to glocal variations in the adaptation of this culture. Parallel to this development, however, bodybuilders today also tend to become even more extreme, using steroids to boost their bodies, trying to reassert their positions as subcultural and as something totally different from the fitness bodies.
From Skins and Neo-Nazi Subcultures to Neo-Conservatism
In this case study, we will follow a path stretching from the British skinheads toward neo-Nazi subcultures and the development of right-wing and neo-conservative political parties in contemporary Europe.
Skinhead style had its origins in South and East London’s working-class districts in the mid- to late 1960s (Ware & Back, 2002). Brake (1974) described skins as working-class adolescents from the poorer parts of society. The skins perceived hippies as lazy and dirty, and they despised everything about them (Brake, 1974). Their style was very spectacular, with Doc Marten boots, cropped and bald hairstyles, and tight Levi jeans. According to Ware and Back (2002), skinheadism emerged in 1969, in the backwater of social movements such as gay rights and feminism. This style was distinguished by its heterosexual, working-class, masculine, and aggressive symbolism. Ware and Back claim that two maxims held this culture together: the recovery of Englishness/Britishness and the striving for White authenticity. In the early days, skinhead culture was characterized by a strange mixture of open racism and nationalism and hybridity and openness to a diversity of cultural influences.
In an early study of 50 skinheads in East London, certain key values and interests were laid out by the sociologist Mike Brake (1974):
Toughness and violence: Skinheads seemed obsessed with violence and a macho culture, worshiping muscles, hardness, and aggressive behavior.
Football: Skinheads were solid supporters of their national team, and had a passionate attachment to their local club.
Ethnocentrism: The subculture was heavily inclined to hold racist attitudes and to despise homosexuals and others who threatened their sense of Britishness. However, their racism was initially complex, and several skinhead groups had Afro-Caribbean members. This changed later on, however.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the subcultural elements of skinhead culture converged and were drawn into the British Movement and the National Front.
The political affiliations of skins were signified by the color of the laces worn in their characteristic Doc Marten boots: white laces indicated support for the National Front, and red laces attested British Movement affiliation. This was mirrored in the musical tastes with the emergence of the postpunk Oi! music scene with bands like Sham 69 and the Cockney Rejects, while the National Front sponsored White Noise Music Club, set up by two key young fascist activists, Patrick Harrington and Nick Griffin, and British Nazi musician Ian Stuart Donaldson in 1979. (Ware & Back, 2002, p. 101)
During the 1980s and 1990s, racist skinheadism was exported to several European countries, among them Sweden and Norway. In this transnational diffusion and transmission of skinhead culture, two things remained intact: nationalism and national chauvinism as well as White pride, on one hand, and a language of racist rhetoric, on the other.
According to Fangen (1998), the right wing of the skinhead subculture has had clear representatives in Europe and the United States since the late 1980s. Although there are strong affiliations and connections between skinhead culture and Nazism, there are also certain differences. The subculture harbors aggression toward immigrants and homosexuals similar to that of Nazism, but it differs from Nazism in its oppositional attitude toward authority. Fangen (1998) interviewed 40 persons active in the Norwegian skinhead subculture in the 1990s. She found, among other things, that they idealized images of past communities and traditions. The skinheads did not celebrate ambivalence and multitudes of identities, but instead ethnic heritage and a nostalgic longing for stability and traditions. The fantasy world of the primarily male skinheads is filled with rigid us-them categories, aggressions toward immigrants, and images of themselves as warriors in a race war. Similar patterns have also been found in studies of skinheads in Germany and Finland (Perho, 2000).
In a study on ex-neo-Nazis in Scandinavia, the American sociologist Michael Kimmel (2007) found both similarities and differences between Scandinavian and American skinheads and neo-Nazis. The Scandinavian adolescents—mostly young men—committed to skinhead culture during a period of their life and used it as a rite of passage, whereas the American skinheads were more committed to racialized ideologies. According to the Scandinavian Skinheads who left the subculture, this had been a rite passage for alienated and insecure adolescent males. Another difference lies in the active and central role played by women in American groups on the far right.
According to Watts (2001), skinhead culture in the 2000s is evolving and developing. Three types of development are visible: (a) the adaptation of skinhead culture and values to the local and national political culture, (b) the increased networking and internationalization of skinhead and neo-Nazi subculture, and (c) the commercialization and commodification of skinhead culture (Campbell, 2006; Sela-Shayovitz, 2011). To describe the development from subculture to mainstreaming, we will look more closely at the Swedish case.
The White power movement was established in Sweden during the early 1990s. It was a result of a blending between the traditional Nazi organizations, the skinhead culture, and an influence from American White supremacy ideology. The White power movement became a subculture of its own thanks to its rituals, use of symbols, production of aesthetics, and certainly its production of ideology. But it was never a uniform subculture, as it produced diverse expressions within its domains and simultaneously struggled to exclude diversity. The skinhead culture is a clear example of this. The skinheads were an essential part of the White power culture, not least as consumers of White power music. In this case, they were indeed needed to maintain financial sustainability. They were also appreciated as “bodyguards” during rallies and other forms of public manifestations. At the same time, for the more political parts of the White power movement, they were unpredictable and uncontrollable. Their use of violence and alcohol often resulted in an undesired bad image for the movement (Lööw, 2002, 2015). But the aesthetics of the skinhead culture became crucial in the early 1990s when the universal formation of the White power movement recruited its followers in local communities without these local groups having had any earlier relations with key persons in the movement. Through the aesthetics of the skinhead culture, newcomers found an easy and clearly understood way to portray themselves as members of the White power movement. For some of its members, this has been described as a passing stage in their later more profound engagement into Nazism (Fangen, 1998). In the study mentioned earlier, Anders, a former Nazi activist, says the following:
I first got involved in the movement via “Vikingrock” music. I approached a guy who I knew also liked this music and he was a skinhead. So I tried my best to look like him, cut my hair, put on boots and a “Bomber” jacket without more consideration than that I wanted to fit in with him and that others should see me as connected to him and, yes the skinhead culture. It was only later that this brought me to a broader group of people, skinheads but also others in the movement where I got my political awareness and joined a Nazi party. (Anders)
There were several attempts to form a solid base for a strong attack on the multicultural within this milieu. These efforts stretched from ideas about armed struggles, even war, to relatively pragmatic parliamentary attempts. In all cases, the attempts ultimately aimed at a profound change in the society, where nationalistic and/or race hierarchies were to be reestablished. This struggle emerged in a context where individuals were drifting between informal social formations and organized activities and parties.
According to the former Nazi activist Anders, he and his comrades adapted their cultural expressions to how they interpreted the context:
After my period as a skinhead and when I became more political, I also adapted my style to the political struggle, both my clothing and behaviour, at least when we were in public. In this process I started considering how I should behave to have maximum output when we were trying to attract newcomers but also without losing the style that was us. (Anders)
By the end of the 1990s, the skinhead culture rapidly declined, and at the same time, the split between the race-ideological part of the movement and the more pragmatic parliamentary part became definitive. Until the mid-1990s, the Swedish Democratic Party (SD) frequently used skinheads as “bodyguards,” but this ceased during the second half of the 1990s. In the skinhead culture as well as the White power movement as a whole, it was common to see this change as a betrayal on the part of the SD. The definitive break between the pragmatic parliamentary groups and the White power movement was strongly related to the latter groups’ experiences of their inability to reach out to people outside the current movement (Lööw, 2015). This break was completed on an organization level before the turn of the millennium, but it is clear that, within the White power movement, there is still positive identification with the later success of the SD. The leading Nazi organization in Sweden, “The Nordic Resistance Movement,” held a poll on their web page after the parliamentary election of 2014. They asked readers whether or not the growing support for the SD would benefit the Swedish people, and of the 1,144 responses, more than 60% felt it would (“The Question of the Week,” 2014). This, together with similar polls and articles in the White power media, is only an indication of the still lasting relations or identifications between the former comrades from the late 1980s or early 1990s.
To understand the current political structure of the SD, it is crucial to look beyond the development of organizations and ideologies within the contemporary history of the extreme right. The SD has emerged from a subcultural context that depends on the White power movement, where they share the experience of a continuous struggle between defining a position and achieving social and political recognition. Today SD has become normalized and gradually a part of the democratic system, whereas some of their earlier affiliates—as for example, The Nordic Resistance Movement—have become radicalized and gradually more militant and extreme.
Conclusion and Discussion
The mass media present deviants as oddities that are seen as disrupting the orderly universe. Their contra-cultural values and behaviour are described using lurid details, thus reassuring the reader that normality exists—that ordinary, decent, everyday values are intact. It was in this way that the racism found throughout English society was perceived and reported as the idiosyncratic behaviour of a small group of violent teenagers, attributing racist and anti-homosexual beliefs. The appertaining of racism and homosexuality to a small group missed the fact that these attitudes were widely spread throughout all classes of political climate. At the same time, it indicated to skinheads in the provinces that, in order to be a righteous skinhead, you had to attack Pakistanis, homosexuals and hippies. (Brake, 1974, p. 194)
In his classic study on skinheads, Mike Brake strongly emphasized the bridges and connections between subcultural processes, expressions, values, and styles and the similar sentiments and values existing in society at large. In the present article, we have discussed the concept of subculture, on one hand, and applied and elaborated on this discussion in relation to two carefully selected examples of subcultures, on the other. Ours is primarily an explorative study, aimed at extending and developing ideas on how subcultures and subcultural processes connect and support more general societal and cultural transformations. In addition, we also want to point out possible ways of methodologically exploring subcultural phenomena.
Regarding theory, our ambition has been to reconnect to the CCCS and the concept of subcultures. However, we also wish to use insights and theoretical developments from postsubcultural theories. Instead of looking at subcultures as fluid and as in constant transition, we focus on the relation between subcultural styles and values and societal and cultural transformations. Looking at the two present case studies, it is obvious that there are bridges and connections between the values and opinions cultivated within the subcultural framework and more general sociocultural and political developments in society.
Exploring the relation between subcultures and the mainstreaming of certain values, opinions, and practices, we can see how subcultural values and sentiments tend to turn into more accepted and normalized ways of relating to the body, health, and politics. Deviance is turned into “normality,” and although some parts and contents of subcultures are toned down, core points and values are extracted and generalized. Bodybuilding has transformed into fitness, but the core values of hard bodies, muscle training, health, and asceticism are highly present in the fitness culture, as well as in more common and dominant sociocultural patterns in, for example, Sweden and the United States. What is interesting here is the process through which common culture is gradually widened and, in some sense, incorporates particular lifestyle attributes and values.
However, the process of normalization does not mean that the complete subcultural content is incorporated and swallowed up. Rather there is some discrimination regarding what kind of subcultural content can leak out of the subcultural milieu and be absorbed. Body techniques, discipline, and knowledge about how to transform the body are being incorporated into fitness culture, and consequently being transformed, marketed, and commercialized. At the same time, certain bodies are framed as too extreme, connected to unhealthy lifestyles, to drugs, and to narcissism, thus being marginalized from the more public domains of fitness culture. In a similar vein, the core values and sentiments of skinhead and right-wing subcultures—xenophobia and nationalism—are currently becoming part of the political culture in many European countries. At the same time, xenophobia and nationalism are often framed in terms of racism and, thereby, excluded from the public culture.
When addressing questions regarding subcultures, we often immediately think about young people and youth culture. If we study contemporary subcultures, it becomes apparent that there are strong intergenerational connections and roots in previous subcultural formations. Many leading profiles are middle-aged or older. To study subcultures, we need to contextualize and investigate both the complex and contradictory structure and content of these “cultures,” as well as the hierarchical relations involved in organizing subcultures.
Regarding methodology, we can also draw some conclusions from the present exploratory study. First, subcultures should be positioned in relation to certain societal transformations. Subcultural expressions and styles become significant and worth studying when they are situated in particular historical periods of time and in relation to societal changes affecting the balance between what is subcultural and what is “common.” Reading the cultural level in relation to these fundamental societal changes also leads us to interesting analyses of how the more ephemeral aspects of subcultures—such as styles, clothes, values, and artifacts—can be understood as parts of more general transformations in society. Listening to voices, narratives, and expressions of desire at the biographical level also directs us to microtransformations of the subjective content in subcultures and in society.
Although our ambition has not been to compare the two subcultures, or to include them in a more elaborated analysis of contemporary society, in the next step, there is, of course, a possibility to start mapping out a more general understanding on how different contemporary subcultures connect both to each other and to more general transformations in society. Subcultures speak to us, signal changes, and disturb our understanding of what is “normal” versus “deviant” in troubling ways. Using subcultures as seismographs, we can gain new insights into the interplay between the subversive and the “normal,” and also sharpen our theoretical tools and possibilities of studying social and cultural change.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.