Subculture Is Dead! Long Live Subculture!

Since Yinger’s (1960) ground-breaking discussion of contra culture and subculture the concept of subculture has been the target of critique ranging from the “blurring of meaning” to the “empirical uselessness” of the concept. Against the background of critiques on the concept and the so-called post-subcultural turn (Bennett 2011) new concepts have emerged like scenes (Silver et al. 2010), neo-tribes (Bennett 1999) or resistance cultures (Johansson & Lalander 2012). Against the backdrop of the continuing controversy regarding the usefulness, or not, of these concepts the contribution reports findings of an effort to assess the spectrum of subculture, scene and/or neo-tribe orientations and practises among young people in the urban Kanton of Zurich area, Switzerland. Based on a representative quantitative study the results indicate that in reference to all three analytical frameworks orientations and practises can be found among the young. These findings illustrate the continuation of subcultural but also the emergence of new, individualised and reflexive youth orientations and practices like scenes and neo-tribes.