Hipsters are generally middle-class white youths looking to imitate the lifestyle of black jazz musical group. The hipster subculture grew, and after World War II, an escalating mythical scene attached itself to the group. Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac were the early hipsters, but Norman Mailer was the one who tried to define the group (McCann, 2008). Norman referred hipsters as American existentialists, living a life bounded by death – wiped out by atomic war or regulated by social agreement in an essay by the title ‘ The white Negro’. As the 1st age group aged, it was changed to the etymologically little hippies, who corrected their worries about the Cold War but held close the society over the individual. (DeBenedetti, 2008)
Every age bracket has its personal counterculture, rebelling against communal customs. Today we have the hipsters, the 1970s had the disco lovers and the 1960s had the hippies. Hipster refers to many different things to different individuals. For a lot of people, it is a cheap abuse; an all-including term for the petty, the hypocritical trend-followers. Whatever comprises the authentic subculture the view tends to be completely negative. It is a set of individuals who usually associate themselves with tolerance and the counterculture yet one which is related with posturing and trends lacking of significance. (Kinzey, 2012)
Since Hipster lifestyle arrived on the scene it has transformed itself in various ways that are sometime equally exclusive to one another. Necessary criteria for a fraction of this alternative subculture composed the love of organic food, thrift clothes, any independent media, micro brews and a slight snicker at anything normal. Present hipsters are absorbed in different cultures, and have a tendency to wear vintage accessories/clothing. Examples of hipster welfare flourish, including but not bounded to: independent films, eating locally/organic grown, alternative music, drinking local beer, pursuing liberal arts education, listening to NPR and riding fixed gear bicycles. The hipster reviewers frequently point out the stylistic utilization of cultural mixture to the position that will result to a meaningless meme. For local businesses that market themselves have a way to attract this new counterculture (Gelder, 2007). The businesses are avoiding the mainstream and determined for strangeness by ensuring that their stores are all the time filled with the most obscure and newest clothes and music.
The depiction was absolute to those in the middle- to upper-class range connected with different culture. This was a quick move away from the previous politically charged counterculture group of the Beats. The hipster picture has been amazingly stable, although in latest years, earlier unconnected musical styles i.e. rap, heavy metal has been absorbed by hipsters. The physical circulation of hipsters has also been quite fixed. The most significant contributing issues to hipster centralization are fiscal standing, and, to a lesser level, socialization opportunities. Middle and upper class persons have a tendency to come together in major cities, and to some extent in suburbs. The party and rave scene also turn out to be in centralized locations, not to point out the simplicity of access to hipster items.
If you get a chance to ask a hipster whether he or she is one, most certainly you will get a no for a response. This is the manner they operate, but if you meet a small group of hipsters, you will obtain a flurry of accusations and finger pointing that will in the long run disclose the whole group to be hipsters. There are numerous ways of identifying who is a hipster.
Looks can really differ with these individuals, but when they are in a group you can recognize some very noticeable themes. Tight jeans are mainly the observable giveaway but do not definitely identify or confirm a hipster. Check out for unreal era clothing or t-shirts that have necks extended outwards. Leggings can also be a dead giveaway as are specs with totally no prescription. A tattoo is also a sign. Everything ethnic will automatically bar an individual from being among the hipster subculture. Something typical from childhood, like cartoon characters or video games, is almost definite to grace the skin of these hipsters. Beards, by tradition the hair on the face of blue collar men, will certainly flush out a hipster if they work in an inspired location. A retro haircut on a female hipster will be a positive recognition.
Occasionally, one will see hipsters on a fixed gear bicycle. These stylish bikes are certainly a contradiction on two wheels. They are bikes that have peddles set to the wheels and have no brakes so that the only technique to halt is to peddle slower or maintain a slow speed. This makes it very much harder to ride than a normal bike. Hipsters, continuous slaves to style, admire the fixie as a distinctive vehicle that rebels against the ordinary ones. Whereas not all hipsters ride a set gear bicycle, all set gear bicycles are owned by hipsters. That is a, cold hard, reality.
The hipster subculture is mainly influenced and wired by scientific advances; however, the culture adores anything vintage. Hipsters socially network and blog a great amount of their lives for the whole world to see, because in the heart of each one of them, with their strange tattoos, and confusing clothes is an unknown attention seeker. Facebook profiles and blogs are not ignored, and nearly every image uploaded are carefully analyzed and studied by people who have taken hold of this kind of cool and turnaround and resell it to the hipster subculture who inspired them.
This nasty sequence of consumerism and innovation has resulted to an increased amount of ordinary folk to be swept away by the blurring lines of the once exceptional and absolutely independent hipster. The final challenge will certainly occur something cool for being outside of the ordinary will finally become the mainstream.
Hipsters take ideas that they are demanding, arrogant and sometimes really straight in their thoughts. Hipsters hang around urban areas where there are thousands of people going about their day. Hipsters also normally stroll around by themselves, or connecting and communicating with individuals who share same appearance, thus a majority of community associates hipsters with a negative stereotype. People need to realize that not every individual who is considered a hipster corresponds with the normally negative beliefs that are linked to the hipster subculture.
According to Cartwright and Sturken’s interpretation the practices of looking, they specify on how the perception of looking versus seeing immediately relates to beliefs. As they focus the perception of looking versus seeing with visual images, people should find it is helpful and interesting to apply the perception with the hipster subculture. When people look at a hipster, they see an untidy, angry, ragged individual, and it is no shock that people instantly put their guard up. On the other hand, instead of just looking at a hipster and coming up with generalizations, it is significant to see into a hipster lifestyle while taking of what a hipster’s culture and life involves. Seeing into a hipster individual is seeing a lively individual with differing experiences, point of view, expectations and values. Hipsters can also be branded as an offset subculture because they decline normal consumerism and decline following the custom ways of life in the present culture.
Hipsters frequently hang about away from gas consuming vehicles and on normal are politically and environmentally alert of what is going on in the world today. They are particularly strong contributors in the latest “green” era since they support others to adjust their unhealthy habits that harmfully affect the world and join environmentally friendly practices.
Granfield (2011), states that hipsters feel that they are individually associated to the “be green” fashion since their practices and ideas of being green started long before culture caught up with the green trend. In addition, according to Gunster (2004) this marks Horkheimer and Adorno study well-known as the practice of pseudo-individualization. This results to a community to have a sense of individuality for a precise experience or subject, but essentially they are one with the multitude following the new fashions in the popular culture. Being green contributes to one of those fashions where hipsters consider being environmentally welcoming is to be put aside from the crowd by not sharing in distinctive culture that contains of constant consumerism. Though, the green fashion has become much commercialized and fashionable as the latest style within recognized culture in which a lot of people are even challenging each other on who can verify to be more concerned on conserving the environment. Many hipsters consider embracing their individuality by being an element of the green ad in the fashionable culture; they are, in fact, united with many others in the community whom are creating important adjustments in expectations of bettering the planet.
Hipster’s subculture is self-contradiction. With an obligation to individual creativity and counterculture line, it is ironical that outlet stores such as Urban Outfitters now mass manufacture the fashions one time exhibited in an effort to undermine the mainstream. This union of mainstream and hipster culture has produced a completely latest kind of pseudo-hipster, called scenester (Leland, 2005). They are no longer dedicated to beating generation and insignificance principles; thus, this division of the hipster subculture has no problem being linked with a label. Actually, they try to recognize with the genuine hipster subculture, but contribute nothing new. Hate of the hipster is ever-present. The age group that gave birth to the hipster subculture like a bastard child looks down on its creation for its arrogance and silliness.
Hipsters give one such difference. Their subculture is a material subculture frequently symbolized by styles or objects appropriated from past periods, meant to appear novel or ironic with modern application. Nevertheless, unlike earlier countercultures or subcultures that used group labels to reify community difference, hipsters defy being referred to as hipsters. They turn away from categorization and yet show clear in-group compliance through specific patterns of dress and style. The study of hipster subculture is further complex by the fame of their sub cultural fashion, building group boundaries extremely permeable and opportunities for imitation ripe and participation. Thus, group difference for hipsters has become an act of marketplace contest. These latest novel complexities and social structures that result from interconnectedness bring about the following questions: First, how are hipsters capable to continue a unified subculture whilst denying their identities and continuously undergoing internal changes?
Second, do new kinds of subculture exist and does their existence reveal bigger socioeconomic changes? Given the basis of sub cultural assumption that sub cultural rank is attained through acts of variance from a supposed dominant class, individuals with high hipster taste will be more probable to express separation, for instance, a need to stand out with their style or fashion, than individuals with a low hipster subculture taste. Given the fast dispersion and advancement of online communication technologies; websites, social networks and blogs tools serve as a way of sustaining group cohesion, in spite of the need for hipsters to differentiate and innovate themselves. Therefore, individuals with high hipster taste will be more probable than people with a lower hipster taste to utilize websites and blogs to look for information about fashion.
The young people of today are changing their lifestyles as a result of information technology. Being an element of some kind of simply categorized sub-culture group has turned out to be increasingly mainstream, and the tougher that people attempt to be different and unique, the more they match a particular mould.
On each street, hipsters extend themselves out in tidy small groups, occupying bus shelters, rotating disc records at every chance, leaning on old graffiti brickwork, jamming on the ukuleles and dominating garage sales (Leland, 2005). It is evident that this is not just an American thing, it is a worldwide thing, and people from each and every major city in the world will keep complaining how hipsters are taking over. On only requires to Google it online to have a look at thousands of blogs that are keen to hipster subculture. For example, search the hipster clips on YouTube and a lot of comments are seen on the hipster way of life. They are simply identifiable and have a very exciting view of the world.
The social scene, Fashion, Social media, Technology, Retro music, DJ’s, Partying at the coolest spots, exercise and self employment, Pilates, Dugs, Organic foods, vintage, Yoga, underground, the 80’s and 90’s, Popular politics and the environment. In each of these areas of the hipster life, there are fascinating contradictions. For Example, take the hipsters political views. They like to consider themselves to be very environmental aware, and they are always talking about means and ways they can reduce their environmental path unless it infringes in any approach on their lifestyle (Kinzey, 2012). Hipsters will still drive their cars, leave empty alcohol bottles lying around, put recyclables in the wrong bin and smoke cigarettes. Again take the hipsters personal health. They will use up all week eating fit organic foods, doing Pilates, Yoga and exercising at the gym, then during the weekend they will spree drink and party all through the week, miss out meals, snort lines, eat fast foods, and barely sleep. In fact hipster subculture is a lifestyle of extremes.
Global exchange of goods and new media technologies has radically expanded chances for individuality signaling. Earlier hidden or distant populations are currently seen by use of online search engines, and the American culture is being send all over the world reaching corners of the developing and developed nations. In spite of these important social changes, yet, recognizable patterns of individuality signaling persist. This growth raises questions of how subcultures and cultures are sustained in an ever-complex social landscape. Nowadays, there are ranges of subcultures whose identity is articulated through consumption (Leland, 2005). As earlier sub cultural theory, born out the Marxist traditions and the functionalist, acknowledged that exhibit of goods reify sub cultural grouping, these theories do not clarify some of present day subcultures. With the increasing interconnectedness, of people, and the rising expression of customs throughout the globe; commodities, signaling no longer occurs at the level of gender, race or class. Signaling now happens by use of online social networks. Online spaces attract new opportunities for signaling and supervision across social and geographic boundaries, resulting to the formation of groups that demoralize earlier theories of subcultures.
Lastly, hipsters, like times of bohemians before them, have commonly chosen to postpone marriage and family indefinitely (Granfield, 2011). The outcome of this is more openness to sexual promiscuity, more sexual experimentation, and more of a leaning to question to customarily prescribed life-paths. Further, this gives more time to hipsters to focus on themselves, their artistic projects, their interests, and to build up their longing for self-creation. They will have a tendency to be better read and informed than the populace as a whole, will know more on ambiguous cultural artifacts (old music, art films, etc). This latter trend can frequently pass to the use of cultural understanding as snobbery, to leave out others who are less ‘in the know’. But is can as well lead to hipsters finding out inspired or creative music, books and film, works that allow for a re-conceptualization and reframing of the world outside the recommendation of commercial mass culture.
According to Gelder (2007), some people believe that the hipster group is the product of an idle culture, a counterculture group passionate with aesthetics rather than ideology. A group with no base yields nothing of importance. Eventually, the hipster group is a societal black hole into which all individuality, meaning and innovation is gone. In order for the globe to progress, the hipster group must be restricted and its effects controlled. People should respond to the hipsters’ subculture like the contagion it is. The hipster can most possibly be restricted economically. The hipster way of life is an exercise of the first modification that builds negative social externalities, and, as a result, can be controlled.
The culture is often dismissed as an image thing by some individuals, but the hipster culture as a whole is carrying out changes in the world, leading to feelings of resentment and insecurity in individuals who are no longer an item in the cultural ruling class. It is significant for people to get informed of the hipster subculture as it is there to stick.
Annotated Bibliography
Gelder, Ken. Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social Practice. London: Routledge, 2007. Print.
This book brings out a cultural history of subcultures, covering a significant range of sub cultural forms and practices. Ken argues from the thought of a sub cultural geography; that subcultures reside in places in particular ways.
Leland, John. Hip, the History. New York: Harper Perennial, 2005. Print.
The history draws the links between Richard Hell and Walt Whitman, or Snoop Dogg and Raymond Chandler. It slinks among the hustlers, geeks, junkies, beats, beboppers, pimps, White Negroes, outlaws and other hipsters who hurtle the American experiment, and without whom we could all be paying attention to.
Granfield, Matt. Hipstermattic: One Man's Quest to Become the Ultimate Hipster. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2011. Internet resource.
This book talks about Matt’s journey to become an ultimate Hipster. How he got the black rimmed specs, he wears skinny jeans and how he got the fixed gear bike. His journey in becoming a hipster is not only funny but it also lightly mocks Hipsters subculture everywhere.
Wehr, Kevin. Hermes on Two Wheels: The Sociology of Bicycle Messengers. Lanham, Md: University Press of America, 2009. Print.
Through messengers’ job, they assist to maintain and reproduce the structures of the community while also constructing a rebellious, politicized, vibrant subculture that has come to symbolize the latest urban hipster, an image repeatedly under threat of co-optation.
Kinzey, Jake. The Sacred and the Profane: An Investigation of Hipsters. Winchester: Zero, 2012. Print.
The book seeks to answer questions such as; ‘why hipsters do not want to be called hipsters?’ and ‘why do the hipsters act like they are different when they are just like any other hipster?’
Weingarten, Marc. From Hipsters to Gonzo: How New Journalism Re-Wrote the World. Carlton North, Vic: Scribe Publications, 2005. Print.
Marc focuses from hipsters to Gonzo. He tells the interesting stories following a number of the classics of the genre such as Armies of the Night and Fear and loathing in Las Vegas. It demonstrates how the new journalism pressed reportage past its narrow limits and changed the mythical culture.
McCann, Paul. Race, Music, and National Identity: Images of Jazz in American Fiction, 1920-1960. Madison N.J: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2008. Print.
DeBenedetti, Charles, and Charles Chatfield. An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement in the Vietnam Era. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse Univ. Press, 2008. Print.
Gunster, Shane. Capitalizing on Culture: Critical Theory for Cultural Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. Print.
Every age bracket has its personal counterculture, rebelling against communal customs. Today we have the hipsters, the 1970s had the disco lovers and the 1960s had the hippies. Hipster refers to many different things to different individuals. For a lot of people, it is a cheap abuse; an all-including term for the petty, the hypocritical trend-followers. Whatever comprises the authentic subculture the view tends to be completely negative. It is a set of individuals who usually associate themselves with tolerance and the counterculture yet one which is related with posturing and trends lacking of significance. (Kinzey, 2012)
Since Hipster lifestyle arrived on the scene it has transformed itself in various ways that are sometime equally exclusive to one another. Necessary criteria for a fraction of this alternative subculture composed the love of organic food, thrift clothes, any independent media, micro brews and a slight snicker at anything normal. Present hipsters are absorbed in different cultures, and have a tendency to wear vintage accessories/clothing. Examples of hipster welfare flourish, including but not bounded to: independent films, eating locally/organic grown, alternative music, drinking local beer, pursuing liberal arts education, listening to NPR and riding fixed gear bicycles. The hipster reviewers frequently point out the stylistic utilization of cultural mixture to the position that will result to a meaningless meme. For local businesses that market themselves have a way to attract this new counterculture (Gelder, 2007). The businesses are avoiding the mainstream and determined for strangeness by ensuring that their stores are all the time filled with the most obscure and newest clothes and music.
The depiction was absolute to those in the middle- to upper-class range connected with different culture. This was a quick move away from the previous politically charged counterculture group of the Beats. The hipster picture has been amazingly stable, although in latest years, earlier unconnected musical styles i.e. rap, heavy metal has been absorbed by hipsters. The physical circulation of hipsters has also been quite fixed. The most significant contributing issues to hipster centralization are fiscal standing, and, to a lesser level, socialization opportunities. Middle and upper class persons have a tendency to come together in major cities, and to some extent in suburbs. The party and rave scene also turn out to be in centralized locations, not to point out the simplicity of access to hipster items.
If you get a chance to ask a hipster whether he or she is one, most certainly you will get a no for a response. This is the manner they operate, but if you meet a small group of hipsters, you will obtain a flurry of accusations and finger pointing that will in the long run disclose the whole group to be hipsters. There are numerous ways of identifying who is a hipster.
Looks can really differ with these individuals, but when they are in a group you can recognize some very noticeable themes. Tight jeans are mainly the observable giveaway but do not definitely identify or confirm a hipster. Check out for unreal era clothing or t-shirts that have necks extended outwards. Leggings can also be a dead giveaway as are specs with totally no prescription. A tattoo is also a sign. Everything ethnic will automatically bar an individual from being among the hipster subculture. Something typical from childhood, like cartoon characters or video games, is almost definite to grace the skin of these hipsters. Beards, by tradition the hair on the face of blue collar men, will certainly flush out a hipster if they work in an inspired location. A retro haircut on a female hipster will be a positive recognition.
Occasionally, one will see hipsters on a fixed gear bicycle. These stylish bikes are certainly a contradiction on two wheels. They are bikes that have peddles set to the wheels and have no brakes so that the only technique to halt is to peddle slower or maintain a slow speed. This makes it very much harder to ride than a normal bike. Hipsters, continuous slaves to style, admire the fixie as a distinctive vehicle that rebels against the ordinary ones. Whereas not all hipsters ride a set gear bicycle, all set gear bicycles are owned by hipsters. That is a, cold hard, reality.
The hipster subculture is mainly influenced and wired by scientific advances; however, the culture adores anything vintage. Hipsters socially network and blog a great amount of their lives for the whole world to see, because in the heart of each one of them, with their strange tattoos, and confusing clothes is an unknown attention seeker. Facebook profiles and blogs are not ignored, and nearly every image uploaded are carefully analyzed and studied by people who have taken hold of this kind of cool and turnaround and resell it to the hipster subculture who inspired them.
This nasty sequence of consumerism and innovation has resulted to an increased amount of ordinary folk to be swept away by the blurring lines of the once exceptional and absolutely independent hipster. The final challenge will certainly occur something cool for being outside of the ordinary will finally become the mainstream.
Hipsters take ideas that they are demanding, arrogant and sometimes really straight in their thoughts. Hipsters hang around urban areas where there are thousands of people going about their day. Hipsters also normally stroll around by themselves, or connecting and communicating with individuals who share same appearance, thus a majority of community associates hipsters with a negative stereotype. People need to realize that not every individual who is considered a hipster corresponds with the normally negative beliefs that are linked to the hipster subculture.
According to Cartwright and Sturken’s interpretation the practices of looking, they specify on how the perception of looking versus seeing immediately relates to beliefs. As they focus the perception of looking versus seeing with visual images, people should find it is helpful and interesting to apply the perception with the hipster subculture. When people look at a hipster, they see an untidy, angry, ragged individual, and it is no shock that people instantly put their guard up. On the other hand, instead of just looking at a hipster and coming up with generalizations, it is significant to see into a hipster lifestyle while taking of what a hipster’s culture and life involves. Seeing into a hipster individual is seeing a lively individual with differing experiences, point of view, expectations and values. Hipsters can also be branded as an offset subculture because they decline normal consumerism and decline following the custom ways of life in the present culture.
Hipsters frequently hang about away from gas consuming vehicles and on normal are politically and environmentally alert of what is going on in the world today. They are particularly strong contributors in the latest “green” era since they support others to adjust their unhealthy habits that harmfully affect the world and join environmentally friendly practices.
Granfield (2011), states that hipsters feel that they are individually associated to the “be green” fashion since their practices and ideas of being green started long before culture caught up with the green trend. In addition, according to Gunster (2004) this marks Horkheimer and Adorno study well-known as the practice of pseudo-individualization. This results to a community to have a sense of individuality for a precise experience or subject, but essentially they are one with the multitude following the new fashions in the popular culture. Being green contributes to one of those fashions where hipsters consider being environmentally welcoming is to be put aside from the crowd by not sharing in distinctive culture that contains of constant consumerism. Though, the green fashion has become much commercialized and fashionable as the latest style within recognized culture in which a lot of people are even challenging each other on who can verify to be more concerned on conserving the environment. Many hipsters consider embracing their individuality by being an element of the green ad in the fashionable culture; they are, in fact, united with many others in the community whom are creating important adjustments in expectations of bettering the planet.
Hipster’s subculture is self-contradiction. With an obligation to individual creativity and counterculture line, it is ironical that outlet stores such as Urban Outfitters now mass manufacture the fashions one time exhibited in an effort to undermine the mainstream. This union of mainstream and hipster culture has produced a completely latest kind of pseudo-hipster, called scenester (Leland, 2005). They are no longer dedicated to beating generation and insignificance principles; thus, this division of the hipster subculture has no problem being linked with a label. Actually, they try to recognize with the genuine hipster subculture, but contribute nothing new. Hate of the hipster is ever-present. The age group that gave birth to the hipster subculture like a bastard child looks down on its creation for its arrogance and silliness.
Hipsters give one such difference. Their subculture is a material subculture frequently symbolized by styles or objects appropriated from past periods, meant to appear novel or ironic with modern application. Nevertheless, unlike earlier countercultures or subcultures that used group labels to reify community difference, hipsters defy being referred to as hipsters. They turn away from categorization and yet show clear in-group compliance through specific patterns of dress and style. The study of hipster subculture is further complex by the fame of their sub cultural fashion, building group boundaries extremely permeable and opportunities for imitation ripe and participation. Thus, group difference for hipsters has become an act of marketplace contest. These latest novel complexities and social structures that result from interconnectedness bring about the following questions: First, how are hipsters capable to continue a unified subculture whilst denying their identities and continuously undergoing internal changes?
Second, do new kinds of subculture exist and does their existence reveal bigger socioeconomic changes? Given the basis of sub cultural assumption that sub cultural rank is attained through acts of variance from a supposed dominant class, individuals with high hipster taste will be more probable to express separation, for instance, a need to stand out with their style or fashion, than individuals with a low hipster subculture taste. Given the fast dispersion and advancement of online communication technologies; websites, social networks and blogs tools serve as a way of sustaining group cohesion, in spite of the need for hipsters to differentiate and innovate themselves. Therefore, individuals with high hipster taste will be more probable than people with a lower hipster taste to utilize websites and blogs to look for information about fashion.
The young people of today are changing their lifestyles as a result of information technology. Being an element of some kind of simply categorized sub-culture group has turned out to be increasingly mainstream, and the tougher that people attempt to be different and unique, the more they match a particular mould.
On each street, hipsters extend themselves out in tidy small groups, occupying bus shelters, rotating disc records at every chance, leaning on old graffiti brickwork, jamming on the ukuleles and dominating garage sales (Leland, 2005). It is evident that this is not just an American thing, it is a worldwide thing, and people from each and every major city in the world will keep complaining how hipsters are taking over. On only requires to Google it online to have a look at thousands of blogs that are keen to hipster subculture. For example, search the hipster clips on YouTube and a lot of comments are seen on the hipster way of life. They are simply identifiable and have a very exciting view of the world.
The social scene, Fashion, Social media, Technology, Retro music, DJ’s, Partying at the coolest spots, exercise and self employment, Pilates, Dugs, Organic foods, vintage, Yoga, underground, the 80’s and 90’s, Popular politics and the environment. In each of these areas of the hipster life, there are fascinating contradictions. For Example, take the hipsters political views. They like to consider themselves to be very environmental aware, and they are always talking about means and ways they can reduce their environmental path unless it infringes in any approach on their lifestyle (Kinzey, 2012). Hipsters will still drive their cars, leave empty alcohol bottles lying around, put recyclables in the wrong bin and smoke cigarettes. Again take the hipsters personal health. They will use up all week eating fit organic foods, doing Pilates, Yoga and exercising at the gym, then during the weekend they will spree drink and party all through the week, miss out meals, snort lines, eat fast foods, and barely sleep. In fact hipster subculture is a lifestyle of extremes.
Global exchange of goods and new media technologies has radically expanded chances for individuality signaling. Earlier hidden or distant populations are currently seen by use of online search engines, and the American culture is being send all over the world reaching corners of the developing and developed nations. In spite of these important social changes, yet, recognizable patterns of individuality signaling persist. This growth raises questions of how subcultures and cultures are sustained in an ever-complex social landscape. Nowadays, there are ranges of subcultures whose identity is articulated through consumption (Leland, 2005). As earlier sub cultural theory, born out the Marxist traditions and the functionalist, acknowledged that exhibit of goods reify sub cultural grouping, these theories do not clarify some of present day subcultures. With the increasing interconnectedness, of people, and the rising expression of customs throughout the globe; commodities, signaling no longer occurs at the level of gender, race or class. Signaling now happens by use of online social networks. Online spaces attract new opportunities for signaling and supervision across social and geographic boundaries, resulting to the formation of groups that demoralize earlier theories of subcultures.
Lastly, hipsters, like times of bohemians before them, have commonly chosen to postpone marriage and family indefinitely (Granfield, 2011). The outcome of this is more openness to sexual promiscuity, more sexual experimentation, and more of a leaning to question to customarily prescribed life-paths. Further, this gives more time to hipsters to focus on themselves, their artistic projects, their interests, and to build up their longing for self-creation. They will have a tendency to be better read and informed than the populace as a whole, will know more on ambiguous cultural artifacts (old music, art films, etc). This latter trend can frequently pass to the use of cultural understanding as snobbery, to leave out others who are less ‘in the know’. But is can as well lead to hipsters finding out inspired or creative music, books and film, works that allow for a re-conceptualization and reframing of the world outside the recommendation of commercial mass culture.
According to Gelder (2007), some people believe that the hipster group is the product of an idle culture, a counterculture group passionate with aesthetics rather than ideology. A group with no base yields nothing of importance. Eventually, the hipster group is a societal black hole into which all individuality, meaning and innovation is gone. In order for the globe to progress, the hipster group must be restricted and its effects controlled. People should respond to the hipsters’ subculture like the contagion it is. The hipster can most possibly be restricted economically. The hipster way of life is an exercise of the first modification that builds negative social externalities, and, as a result, can be controlled.
The culture is often dismissed as an image thing by some individuals, but the hipster culture as a whole is carrying out changes in the world, leading to feelings of resentment and insecurity in individuals who are no longer an item in the cultural ruling class. It is significant for people to get informed of the hipster subculture as it is there to stick.
Annotated Bibliography
Gelder, Ken. Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social Practice. London: Routledge, 2007. Print.
This book brings out a cultural history of subcultures, covering a significant range of sub cultural forms and practices. Ken argues from the thought of a sub cultural geography; that subcultures reside in places in particular ways.
Leland, John. Hip, the History. New York: Harper Perennial, 2005. Print.
The history draws the links between Richard Hell and Walt Whitman, or Snoop Dogg and Raymond Chandler. It slinks among the hustlers, geeks, junkies, beats, beboppers, pimps, White Negroes, outlaws and other hipsters who hurtle the American experiment, and without whom we could all be paying attention to.
Granfield, Matt. Hipstermattic: One Man's Quest to Become the Ultimate Hipster. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2011. Internet resource.
This book talks about Matt’s journey to become an ultimate Hipster. How he got the black rimmed specs, he wears skinny jeans and how he got the fixed gear bike. His journey in becoming a hipster is not only funny but it also lightly mocks Hipsters subculture everywhere.
Wehr, Kevin. Hermes on Two Wheels: The Sociology of Bicycle Messengers. Lanham, Md: University Press of America, 2009. Print.
Through messengers’ job, they assist to maintain and reproduce the structures of the community while also constructing a rebellious, politicized, vibrant subculture that has come to symbolize the latest urban hipster, an image repeatedly under threat of co-optation.
Kinzey, Jake. The Sacred and the Profane: An Investigation of Hipsters. Winchester: Zero, 2012. Print.
The book seeks to answer questions such as; ‘why hipsters do not want to be called hipsters?’ and ‘why do the hipsters act like they are different when they are just like any other hipster?’
Weingarten, Marc. From Hipsters to Gonzo: How New Journalism Re-Wrote the World. Carlton North, Vic: Scribe Publications, 2005. Print.
Marc focuses from hipsters to Gonzo. He tells the interesting stories following a number of the classics of the genre such as Armies of the Night and Fear and loathing in Las Vegas. It demonstrates how the new journalism pressed reportage past its narrow limits and changed the mythical culture.
McCann, Paul. Race, Music, and National Identity: Images of Jazz in American Fiction, 1920-1960. Madison N.J: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2008. Print.
DeBenedetti, Charles, and Charles Chatfield. An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement in the Vietnam Era. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse Univ. Press, 2008. Print.
Gunster, Shane. Capitalizing on Culture: Critical Theory for Cultural Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. Print.
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