Twenty-first century popular culture has given birth to a peculiar cultural figure: the hipster. Stereotypically associated with nerd glasses, beards and buns, boho clothing, and ironic T-shirts, hipsters represent a (post-)postmodern (post-)subculture whose style, aesthetics, and practices have increasingly become mainstream. Hipster Culture is the first comprehensive collection of original studies that address the hipster and hipster culture from a range of cultural studies perspectives. Analyzing the cultural, economic, aesthetic, and political meanings and implications of a wide range of phenomena prominently associated with hipster culture, the contributors bring their expertise and own research perspectives to bear, thus shaping the volume's transnational and intersectional approach. Chapters address global and local manifestations of hipster culture, processes of urban gentrification and cultural appropriation, alternative foodways and eclectic fashion styles, the significance of nostalgia, retro technologies and social media, and the aesthetics and cultural politics of literature, film, art, and music marked by self-reflexivity, irony, and a simultaneous longing for an earnest authenticity. Hipster Culture explores the diversification of hipster culture, sheds light on popular constructions of the hipster as cultural Other, and critically investigates hipster culture's entanglements with and challenges to dominant cultural discourses of gender, ethnicity, race, sexuality, age, religion, and nationality.

Insider twentysomething Christian journalist Brett McCracken has grown up in the evangelical Christian subculture and observed the recent shift away from the "stained glass and steeples" old guard of traditional Christianity to a more unorthodox, stylized 21st-century church. This change raises a big issue for the church in our postmodern world: the question of cool. The question is whether or not Christianity can be, should be, or is, in fact, cool. This probing book is about an emerging category of Christians McCracken calls "Christian hipsters"--the unlikely fusion of the American obsessions with worldly "cool" and otherworldly religion--an analysis of what they're about, why they exist, and what it all means for Christianity and the church's relevancy and hipness in today's youth-oriented culture.

A hilarious book that will teach you everything you need to know to be too cool for school: "Your official guide to the language, culture and style of hipsters young and old." —Los Angeles Times hip•ster - \hip-stur (s)\ n. One who possesses tastes, social attitudes, and opinions deemed cool by the cool. (Note: it is no longer recommended that one use the term "cool"; a Hipster would instead say "deck.") The Hipster walks among the masses in daily life but is not a part of them and shuns or reduces to kitsch anything held dear by the mainstream. A Hipster ideally possesses no more than 2% body fat. Clues You Are a Hipster 1. You graduated from a liberal arts school whose football team hasn't won a game since the Reagan administration. 2. You frequently use the term "postmodern" (or its commonly used variation"PoMo") as an adjective, noun, and verb. 3. You carry a shoulder-strap messenger bag and have at one time or another worn a pair of horn-rimmed or Elvis Costello-style glasses. 4. You have refined taste and consider yourself exceptionally cultured, but have one pop vice (ElimiDATE, Quiet Riot, and Entertainment Weekly are popular ones) that helps to define you as well-rounded. 5. You have kissed someone of the same gender and often bring this up in casual conversation. 6. You spend much of your leisure time in bars and restaurants with monosyllabic names like Plant, Bound, and Shine. 7. You bought your dishes and a checkered tablecloth at a thrift shop to be kitschy, and often throw vegetarian dinner parties. 8. You have one Republican friend whom you always describe as being your "one Republican friend." 9. You enjoy complaining about gentrification even though you are responsible for it yourself. 10. Your hair looks best unwashed and you position your head on your pillow at night in a way that will really maximize your cowlicks. 11. You own records put out by Matador, DFA, Definitive Jux, Dischord, Warp, Thrill Jockey, Smells Like Records, and Drag City.

A tongue-in-cheek guide to spotting hipsters in their natural habitat. Spotting a hipster used to be simple—a guy in his twenties who had a beard and rode a bicycle. However, over recent years the line between hipster and everyday human has blurred beyond recognition, so it’s understandable if you’ve grown confused. Don’t worry—How to Spot a Hipster is here to help. Think your best friend might be a hipster? Are they drinking from mason jars and picking up vintage vinyl on the weekends? Do they profess a love of craft beer, Fleetwood Mac, and pickles? Could you, in fact, be a hipster? From bike riding to grooming and fashion, and to all extents of the hipster lifestyle, How to Spot a Hipster is a comprehensive cornucopia of content that will ensure you never use the H-word without complete confidence.

Twenty-first century popular culture has given birth to a peculiar cultural figure: the hipster. Stereotypically associated with nerd glasses, beards and buns, boho clothing, and ironic T-shirts, hipsters represent a (post-)postmodern (post-)subculture whose style, aesthetics, and practices have increasingly become mainstream. Hipster Culture is the first comprehensive collection of original studies that address the hipster and hipster culture from a range of cultural studies perspectives. Analyzing the cultural, economic, aesthetic, and political meanings and implications of a wide range of phenomena prominently associated with hipster culture, the contributors bring their expertise and own research perspectives to bear, thus shaping the volume's transnational and intersectional approach. Chapters address global and local manifestations of hipster culture, processes of urban gentrification and cultural appropriation, alternative foodways and eclectic fashion styles, the significance of nostalgia, retro technologies and social media, and the aesthetics and cultural politics of literature, film, art, and music marked by self-reflexivity, irony, and a simultaneous longing for an earnest authenticity. Hipster Culture explores the diversification of hipster culture, sheds light on popular constructions of the hipster as cultural Other, and critically investigates hipster culture's entanglements with and challenges to dominant cultural discourses of gender, ethnicity, race, sexuality, age, religion, and nationality.

Who was the turn-of-the-century hipster? Who is free enough of the hipster taint to write this history without contempt or nostalgia? Why are we tempted to declare the neo-hipster moment over, when the hipster's "global brand" has just reached its apotheosis? A panel of n+1 writers, including Mark Greif, Christian Lorentzen, and Jace Clayton (aka dj/rupture) invited the public to join an investigation into the rise and fall of the contemporary hipster. Their debate took place at the New School University in New York City, and was followed by articles, responses, and essays, all printed here for the first time. "The hipster is that person, overlapping with declassing or disaffiliating groupings—the starving artist, the starving graduate student, the neo-bohemian, the vegan or bicyclist or skatepunk, the would-be blue-collar or post-racial individual—who in fact aligns himself both with rebel subculture and with the dominant class, and opens up a poisonous conduit between the two." "Isn't hipsterism, like, the best thing that's happened at the end of the Bush years?" "The truth was that there was no culture worth speaking of, and the people called hipsters just happened to be young, and more often than not, funny looking."