China is rapidly becoming an important market for consumer goods, but relatively little is known about variations in consumer shopping patterns in different regions of China. We employ a cultural ...materialism perspective in understanding decision-making styles of inland and coastal shoppers. Our findings reveal that consumers in the two regional markets do not differ in utilitarian shopping styles but they do in hedonic shopping styles. Marketers need to understand these differences to be able to market effectively to consumers in different regional markets within China.
This study tests the extent to which an adherence to the subculture of violence uniquely predicts a tendency to favor violence or instead predicts a more generalized offending repertoire, of which ...violence is part. Specifically, we use a unique analytic technique that provides the opportunity to distinguish empirically between the “violent offender” and/or the “frequent offender.” The results suggest that holding values favorable toward violence consistently predicts general offending but do not identify youth who systematically favor violence over nonviolence. This discussion considers the impact of these findings for the continued utility of the subculture of violence perspective.
How do habits change? Some mobility scholars describe habits as regularly evolving. Several psychologists, on the other hand, observe radical changes originating from disruptions in our environment. ...I show that these two perspectives can be integrated using Berger and Luckmann's model of individual change. In the first phase, a shock from the environment disrupt a habit or habits, which are later replaced by new habits progressively learned as part of a group. I applied this model to two French bike workshops active in cycling subculture. I used interviews and participant observation in the two workshops to examine how communities potentially lead their members to change their body habits (their way of moving, seeing, touching), their perception of the car and social mobility, and to adopt a radical definition of the "good life". I found that the depth and breadth of habit change depended on the individual's involvement in the bike workshop and of the type of shock he/she experienced. As a result, I show how an instance of the cycling subculture transforms habits, both progressively and radically, by strengthening the relationship between individuals and their bikes. The article opens the path to applications of Berger and Luckmann's theory to mobility.
Popular culture has recognized urban gay men's use of the Web over the last ten years, with gay Internet dating and Net-cruising featuring as narrative devices in hit television shows. Yet to date, ...the relationship between urban gay male culture and digital media technologies has received only limited critical attention.
Gaydar Culture explores the integration of specific techno-cultural practices within contemporary gay male sub-culture. Taking British gay culture as its primary interest, the book locates its critical discussion within the wider global context of a proliferating model of Western 'metropolitan' gay male culture.
Making use of a series of case studies in the development of a theoretical framework through which past, present and future practices of digital immersion can be understood and critiqued; this book constitutes a timely intervention into the fields of digital media studies, cultural studies and the study of gender and sexuality.
The use of e‐cigarettes is increasing, a practice denoted as vaping. We explore user motives, self‐identity as vapers and involvement in vaping subcultures, drawing on sociological theory of stigma, ...subcultures and symbolic boundaries. Based on analyses of semi‐structured interviews with 30 Norwegian vapers, we find that there is a vaping subculture in Norway. We identify two dominant vaper identities. The first is labelled cloud chasers. These were dedicated vapers who identified with symbols and values in the subculture. Many were politically engaged in improving vaping regulation regimes and felt a sense of belonging to a vaping community. The second group is labelled substitutes. These were former daily smokers who used e‐cigarettes for smoking cessation in a more pragmatic and defensive manner, to avoid health risks, to escape the stigma of smoking and to manage nicotine addiction. In this group, self‐identity as a vaper was generally lacking. Vaping was often symbolically linked to the stigmatised smoker identity they wanted to escape, and was restricted to private contexts. The perceived symbolic meaning of e‐cigarettes varies: for some, they are a symbol of pleasure and community. For others, they connote the stigmatised status of the addicted smoker seeking an alternative to cigarettes.
Domestically and globally females continue to be underrepresented in policing, despite their greater likelihood of advancing themselves through higher education, driving organizational change, and ...being less likely to use excessive force or be named in civil litigation than their male counterparts. Extant research indicates that women may be effectively gated from policing by a subculture that aggrandizes characteristics consistent with the crime-fighting paradigm. Using qualitative data from in-depth interviews with female officers, this study investigates the female officer experience of police subculture in terms of masculinity, gender disparities, and sexualized activities. To understand the perceived environment of the department and contextualize it within the literature, the dominance of masculine personality traits and gender disparities within the department are first explored to determine whether a hypermasculine subculture was present. Then, female officers’ definitions of sexual harassment, their roles in these activities, and their motivations for participation were examined.
In Sexuality and the Rise of China Travis S. K. Kong examines the changing meanings of same-sex identities, communities, and cultures for young Chinese gay men in contemporary Hong Kong, Taiwan, and ...mainland China. Drawing on ninety life stories, Kong’s transnational queer sociological approach shows the complex interplay between personal biography and the dramatically changing social institutions in these three societies. Kong conceptualizes coming out as relational politics and the queer/tongzhi community and commons as an affective, imaginative means of connecting, governed by homonormative masculinity. He shows how monogamy is a form of cruel optimism and envisions state and sexuality intertwining in different versions of homonationalism in each location. Tracing the alternately diverging and converging paths of being young, "Chinese," gay, and male, Kong reveals how both Western and emerging inter- and intra- Asian queer cultures shape queer/tongzhi experiences. Most significantly, at this historical juncture characterized by the rise of China, Kong criticizes the globalization of sexuality by emphasizing inter-Asia modeling, referencing, and solidarities and debunks the essentializing myth of Chineseness, thereby decolonizing Western sexual knowledge and demonstrating the differential meanings of Chineseness/queerness across the Sinophone world.
The historical relationship between youth subcultures and mainstream media has long been the subject of debate. Some researchers have proposed that, after mixed panic and hype, the media quickly ...coopts and commodifies subcultural threats. Conversely, others have argued that negative media coverage keeps subcultures coherent and thriving, while positive coverage is the 'kiss of death'. Despite its continued importance, few studies have closely examined this topic and none has quantitatively examined changes in subcultural media representation over time using archival data. This paper addresses this gap though a computer-assisted content analysis of 735 newspaper articles about punk subculture spanning three decades of publication. The results provide mixed support for both theoretical predictions, but fit neither perfectly. Overall coverage is ambivalent in tone, but becomes more positive and less radical over time. Punk takes far longer to commodify than cooptation perspectives predict. It survives positive coverage, but becomes increasingly coherent. The results call into question previous claims about media representation, highlight the need for more synthetic theories of the media's relationship to subcultures, and illustrate the utility of text-mining methods for historical youth studies.
This article is a critical review of studies on gaming communities. In particular, it analyses the use of subcultural, post-subcultural and postmodern subcultural theorists in relation to video games ...players. Academic use of sociological concepts to study gaming communities, such as neo-tribe, subculture, lifestyle, and scene, is not always explained and almost all sociological instruments show limits in engaging the complex and changing phenomena of video gaming cultures. The article focuses on the misleading use of the term subculture and, therefore, analyses effective applications of post-subcultural and post-modern subcultural approaches to specific case studies. Eventually, the relation between gamers and video games cultures is analysed. In this sense, I argue that the complexity of gaming communities is difficult to be framed and I suggest the use of the Bourdieusian concept of champ.
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