Dick Hebdige

From MarxWiki

Author of Subculture: The Meaning of Style, an important work that examines the relationship between dominant culture and subcultures. Hebdige focuses on the sub-cultures that emerged in post-World War II Britain including teddy boys, the mods, skinheads, and Punks. He defines subculture as resistance to ruling ideology through style. `His study on the connection between style and fashion and culture is referenced in many other academic works today even outside of cultural studies.

Hebidge stated “postmodernity is is modernity without the hopes and dreams which made modernity bearable`. He believed that those in society that dominated matierally were bound to dominate intellectually and morally. In other words, the values of the mightiest will be taken as “normal” and “just” and will in turn be imposed on the rest of society: [W]e must first consider how power is distributed in our society. . . Some groups have more say, more opportunity to make the rules, to organize meaning, while others are less favorably placed. . . These 'maps of meaning' are charged with a potentially explosive significance because they are traced and re-traced along lines laid down by the dominant discourses about reality, the dominant ideologies. They thus tend to represent, in however obscure and contradictory a fashion, the interests of the dominant groups in society (14).