First Published in 2002. It is easy to see that we are living in a time of rapid and radical social change. It is much less easy to grasp the fact that such change will inevitably affect the nature of those disciplines that both reflect our society and help to shape it. Yet this is nowhere more apparent than in the central field of what may, in general terms, be called literary studies. ‘New Accents’ is intended as a positive response to the initiative offered by such a situation. Each volume in the series will seek to encourage rather than resist the process of change. To stretch rather than reinforce the boundaries that currently define literature and its academic study.

Subcultures: The Basics is an accessible, engaging introduction to youth cultures in a global context. Blending theory and practice to examine a range of subcultural movements including hip hop in Japan, global graffiti writing crews, heavy metal in Europe and straight edge movements in the USA, this text answers the key questions posed by those new to the subject, including: What is a subculture? How do subcultures emerge, who participates and why? What is the relationship between deviance, resistance and the ‘mainstream’? How does society react to different subcultural movements? How has global media and virtual networking influenced subcultures? Is there a life ‘after’ subculture? Tracing the history and development of subcultures to the present day, with further reading and case studies throughout, this text is essential reading for all those studying youth culture in the contexts of sociology, cultural studies, media studies, anthropology and criminology.

American Subcultures explores cultural identities and marginalized groups to teach you more about their various interactions and experiences while keeping a low price.

Revised and update completely to include new research and theories, this second edition of a hugely successful book brings together a range of articles, from big names in the field, classic texts and new thinking on subcultures and their definitions.

This “marvelously absorbing” book is “a walk on the wild side of words and ventures into the zone where language and mathematics intersect” (San Jose Mercury News). A former Wall Street Journal reporter and NPR regular, Stefan Fatsis recounts his remarkable rise through the ranks of elite Scrabble players while exploring the game’s strange, potent hold over them—and him. At least thirty million American homes have a Scrabble set—but the game’s most talented competitors inhabit a sphere far removed from the masses of “living room players.” Theirs is a surprisingly diverse subculture whose stars include a vitamin-popping standup comic; a former bank teller whose intestinal troubles earned him the nickname “G.I. Joel”; a burly, unemployed African American from Baltimore’s inner city; the three-time national champion who plays according to Zen principles; and the author himself, who over the course of the book is transformed from a curious reporter to a confirmed Scrabble nut. Fatsis begins by haunting the gritty corner of a Greenwich Village park where pickup Scrabble games can be found whenever weather permits. His curiosity soon morphs into compulsion, as he sets about memorizing thousands of obscure words and fills his evenings with solo Scrabble played on his living room floor. Before long he finds himself at tournaments, socializing—and competing—with Scrabble’s elite. But this book is about more than hardcore Scrabblers, for the game yields insights into realms as disparate as linguistics, psychology, and mathematics. Word Freak extends its reach even farther, pondering the light Scrabble throws on such notions as brilliance, memory, competition, failure, and hope. It is a geography of obsession that celebrates the uncanny powers locked in all of us, “a can’t-put-it-down narrative that dances between memoir and reportage” (Los Angeles Times). “Funny, thoughtful, character-rich, unchallengeably winning writing.” —The Atlantic Monthly This edition includes a new afterword by the author.

Western fashion has been widely appreciated and consumed in Tokyo for decades, but since the mid-1990s Japanese youth have been playing a crucial role in forming their own unique fashion communities and producing creative styles which have had a major impact on fashion globally. Geographically and stylistically defined, subcultures such as Lolita in Harajuku, Gyaru and Gyaru-o in Shibuya, Age-jo in Shinjuku, and Mori Girl in Kouenji, reflect the affiliation and identities of their members, and have often blurred the boundary between professionals and amateurs for models, photographers, merchandisers and designers. Based on insightful ethnographic fieldwork in Tokyo, Fashioning Japanese Subcultures is the first theoretical and analytical study on Japan's contemporary youth subcultures and their stylistic expressions. It is essential reading for students, scholars and anyone interested in fashion, sociology and subcultures.

This book presents a cultural history of subcultures, covering a remarkable range of subcultural forms and practices. It begins with London’s ‘Elizabethan underworld’, taking the rogue and vagabond as subcultural prototypes: the basis for Marx’s later view of subcultures as the lumpenproletariat, and Henry Mayhew’s view of subcultures as ‘those that will not work’. Subcultures are always in some way non-conforming or dissenting. They are social - with their own shared conventions, values, rituals, and so on – but they can also seem ‘immersed’ or self-absorbed. This book identifies six key ways in which subcultures have generally been understood: through their often negative relation to work: idle, parasitical, hedonistic, criminal their negative or ambivalent relation to class their association with territory - the ‘street’, the ‘hood’, the club - rather than property their movement away from home into non-domestic forms of ‘belonging’ their ties to excess and exaggeration (as opposed to restraint and moderation) their refusal of the banalities of ordinary life and in particular, of massification. Subcultures looks at the way these features find expression across many different subcultural groups: from the Ranters to the riot grrrls, from taxi dancers to drag queens and kings, from bebop to hip hop, from dandies to punk, from hobos to leatherfolk, and from hippies and bohemians to digital pirates and virtual communities. It argues that subcultural identity is primarily a matter of narrative and narration, which means that its focus is literary as well as sociological. It also argues for the idea of a subcultural geography: that subcultures inhabit places in particular ways, their investment in them being as much imaginary as real and, in some cases, strikingly utopian.