There aren’t just cultures in every society, but there is also a range of subcultures and countercultures which evolve in society. Generalizations, professions, likes, dislikes, lifestyles, class, etc. all form subcultures and countercultures. Dick Hebdige claimed subculture was a subversion of normality. Subculture is mostly viewed as unfavourable and has a critical nature. Subculture brings individuals together, people who feel ignored or different from society and grants them the opportunity to build up a feeling of belonging.
The word counterculture is an anthropological concept used to refer to cultural group values and behavioural norms. A counterculture is also a faction whose actions differ significantly from society’s norm. Although there have been separate countercultural undercurrents in many cultures, here, the word points to a much more meaningful, identifiable trend that hits a sufficient number and lingers for a specific period.
SUBCULTURE
Practically, a subculture is referred to as a set of individuals who distinguish themselves from the broader culture they belong to. In the early 1950s, there was a difference between an accepted majority style and a subculture as a vigorous minority style.
There are thousands of subcultures within the USA. Racial and ethnic groups share their heritage language, food, and traditions. The shared experiences bind other subcultures. Biker culture revolves around a motorcycling dedication. Several subcultures are made up of members who exude characteristics or likes and dislikes that vary from the more significant part of the population in a society. Aesthetic modifications to the human body, such as tattoos and some types of plastic surgery, are accepted by the body modification group. Adolescents in the United States sometimes form subcultures to establish a collective identity among young people.
Racial Subcultures
Subcultures vary considerably in their beliefs, ambitions, and beliefs that are mirrored in their priorities of consumption, purchase behaviour, spend-save trends, social traditions, customs, credit usage, etc. These days, multiracial societies such as America are made up of people who emerge from distinct countries or are part of various races.
Organizational Culture
This is a form of a subculture that enables participants to have a group and society that impact personal conduct. It refers to the methods an organization adopts in handling its environment.
Religious Subcultures
The majority of today’s world societies are individuals who subscribe to various religions that may vary in their customs, beliefs, and values. The religious groups may take different traditions, execute important passage rites (such as marriage, birth, and death) in various respects, and have varying celebrations.
COUNTERCULTURE
Counterculture is the people’s philosophy that operates contrary to mainstream culture. They don’t share the same principles and protest actions and try to change them. The hippie movement and the protesters opposing the U.S. participation in the Vietnam War is an excellent example of conflicting sets of beliefs and individuals operating outside the societal standards already developed.
Becoming a member of a counterculture implies having a different set of rules, a different sort of conduct, and a deliberate desire to segregate from the mainstream values that are not accepted. It means protesting actively against them.
SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN COUNTERCULTURE AND SUBCULTURES
Culture consists of a combination of subcultures. Therefore, a single subculture is a tiny section of the broader culture, usually defined by a communal socioeconomic status or shared cultural interest.
Countercultures, as well as subcultures both, identify in juxtaposition with a society’s dominant culture. Members usually dress and act differently than ordinary society’s citizens, and are generally identifiable by their distinct performances.
By contrast, a counterculture is described by its resistance to the dominant culture. A counterculture member can object to the values of the predominant cultures. Or, it could merely resist certain sections of the culture of some subcultures.
A subculture is slightly different from a society’s dominant culture, whereas a counterculture is opposed to the culture or subculture itself.
Both Jews and members of the Tea Party are instances of subcultures within America. Whereas the subculture of the Jewish is focused on shared religious beliefs, the Tea Party group was mainly built on frustration based on politics.
Subcultures also tend to share common goals and common knowledge.
There may be subcultures within the mainstream culture. Common interests, aesthetics, and experience unite the subcultures.
Subcultures are distinguishing parts of a nation or society’s broader culture that are characterized by communal interests in cultural or musical events, membership of or participation in a particular socioeconomic status, or ethnic group.
Although certain subcultures exist at variance with the dominant culture of society, some thrive cohesively inside it.
Subcultures integrate significant portions of the larger cultures they contribute to, although they may vary significantly in detail.
Subculture put together people of like minds who feel disregarded by standards of society and allows them a feeling of belonging to develop.
Subcultures may be stereotypical as a result of the members’ age, race, sex, position, and gender. Linguistic, cultural, geographical, sexual, political or a mixture of factors can be the characteristics that define subculture as dissimilar.
Throughout the last century, counterculture examples could be the suffragettes, the green movement, the polygamists and feminists, the punk movement, and the infamous hippie counterculture movement of the 1960s, created to oppose the dominant culture.
All these countercultures have particular values and beliefs which provoke social change.
Countercultures are significant movements causing social change.
Countercultures are opposed to mainstream culture. Members of a counterculture gather around their willingness to oppose movements within the more significant, dominant culture.
CONCLUSION
The term counterculture isn’t wholly a sufficient way of describing all the adjustments which occurred for various reasons. Several changes have been a development of events across the century, other changes have been due to technological advances which have always generated new concepts and ways of viewing the world, and these changes can be described better as ideologies or movements.
Subcultures make it possible to integrate, socialize, and give people who have common interests a feeling of connection and fellowship between peers.
Subcultural studies sometimes include member-observation and may underline anthropological or sociological analysis in multiple ways to tackle the organization and production of material, relational, and symbolic systems and structures.