Issue 1, Vol. 106 (2019)

Throughout its history, studies of subcultures have drawn on a large body of different paradigms, from the sociological tradition of Chicago school, through the cultural studies perspective of Birmingham CCCS to the post-modernism of post-subculture studies. What all of these have in common, besides the topic of their interest, is the perspective of subcultures as a world in itself or subcultures as a reaction to dominant society or combination of both.
In our paper, we argue for a more encompassing theoretical view, which we tend to call a relational perspective. Inspired by symbolic interactionism (G. A. Fine, J. P. Williams) and studies on identity and alterity (R. Brubaker, F. Cooper, T. H. Eriksen, G. C. Spivak), while building on concepts devised in post-subcultural studies (S. Thornton, D. Muggleton, R. Weinzierl), we claim that delineation of a particular subculture is done in respect to many different actors.

The aim of this study is to critically analyze the role of printed fanzines in post-digital era. Fanzines are non-commercial magazines which are mainly produced by the insiders of subcultures. They used to brought fresh information to readers but their role has changed. The main research question of this study is why do authors from Czech insiders of hardcore-punk subculture (which are currently the most active producers) still produce printed magazines when fresh information can be easily found on the internet. Fanzines in contrast with mainstream media are participatory media (which turn consumers into producers) – subculture has non-hierarchical structure therefore it offers a bigger space for participation. I chose the method of qualitative in-depth interviews with 8 informers to be able to learn more about subcultural mechanisms – part of the informers were active in pre-digital era and the second part of the informers were active in post-digital era. This range of informers helped me to depict the change which came along with digital media.

The media studies vocabulary has included the word hipster in multiple ways recently and named thus seemingly unrelated phenomena. Our focus is on what puts together this diversity, and to what extent this rhetoric responds to the existing hipster values system that is more a life feeling than style or subculture. The dynamics between life style and subculture identity, dissolution of strong subcultures to tribes, scenes, and so on, or the doubt – denial even – of subculture identity are the motives that hipsterhood implicitly thematizes in the way of its cultural presentation and semantic sedimentation. We are interested mainly in existential semantics of hipsterhood as a life feeling with the stress on its aesthetic qualities, the questioning of the perception of hipsterhood – dissolving semantics of the concept and unclear semantics of the phenomenon that oscillates between a worldview, life style and fashionable trend. Methodological key to the understanding will be the interpretation of tension between the values defined by the dynamics of contradiction.

This study aims to begin to fill the relative gap in research into ecstatic practices in subcultural scenes. To this end, it focuses on two more hardcore groups of football supporters (ultras and hooligans) and two extreme music scenes (black metal and crust punk). Its research methodology relies mainly on participant observation. It considers the ecstatic states of hardcore football supporters and extreme music fans with an emphasis on key contexts, practices and meanings. The study proposes to apply a model of Dionysiac ritual to interpret all these practices and discusses them in relation to the transgression of social norms and commodification in the context of late capitalism.

The paper focuses on Czech alternative lifestyles and subcultures which cannot be defined by music and youth and for that uses the concept of cultural creatives (Ray, Anderson, 2000) which is formed by a convergence of social movements and countercultures since the 1960s. Based on a qualitative media analysis of Czech alternative lifestyle magazine (Pravý domácí časopis – Real Homemade Magazine) which represents and co-creates alternative lifestyles and values with environmental, spiritual and women´s issues´ focus, the author looks for linkages of specific lifestyles and practices. There are united by values and principles, such as: turn to nature, freedom and autonomy and change of consciousness. Also, the issue of collective identity, community and neo-tribes in which people represented in the medium encounter, is addressed.

The article focuses on the interaction between subcultural styles and political radicalism in Czechia after 1989. Using two case studies, from the anarcho-autonomist milieu and the extra-parliamentary extreme right, it looks at the situation of the radical political movement with youth musical subcultures (in the case of the extreme right, the skinhead subculture, in the case of the anarchists, above all punk and freetekno). In both milieus it identifies four key moments: 1) the important role played by subcultures in the rise of a political environment, 2) attempts to reflect the subculture as limiting, and to leave its limits behind, 3) the transmutation of subcultural styles and 4) ensuing hybridisation. We show that attempts to leave behind the subcultural environment were not successful, but that interconnection in the subculture environment led to tension, movements of crisis and differentiation between the various scenes.