- Universitaet Potsdam, Romanistik, Post-Docadd
- Subcultures, Youth subcultures (Sociology), Youth subcultures (Anthropology), Subcultural Studies, Cultural Semiotics, Social Semiotics, and 7 moreSemiotics Of Culture, Sociology of Violence and Crime, Sociology of Childhood and Youth, Urban Sociology, Urban Subcultures, Poverty, and Social Exclusion and Social Inequalitiesedit
The purpose of this work is to apply the methods of textual semiotics to subcultures, in particular to the little known glam subculture. Subcultures have been the main research field of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural... more
The purpose of this work is to apply the methods of textual semiotics to subcultures, in particular to the little known glam subculture. Subcultures have been the main research field of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, known for its interdisciplinary approach, and for its focus on the creative aspects of subculture. Hebdige, in particular, introduced many semiotic elements in his work, as the aberrant decoding after Eco and the cultural creativity via bricolage after Lévi-Strauss. His definition of subculture as symbolic resistance has been criticized by the following post-subcultural researchers for its abstractness and lack of cohesion.
Semiotics eventually have been expelled from the set of tools used in sociology for the analysis of subcultures. Nowadays, the studies on subcultures have a strong ethnographic focus. Due to terminological proliferation and a descriptive approach, it is difficult to compare them on a common basis.
Textual semiotics, through the concept of semiosphere developed by Lotman, allows to go back to the intuitions of Hebdige, organizing the semiotic elements already present in his work into a wider system of interpretation. The semiosphere offers a coherent theoretical horizon as a basis for further analysis, and a new methodological perspective focusing on the cultural. In this thesis for the first time the work of Lotman is applied to the study of a subculture.
Semiotics eventually have been expelled from the set of tools used in sociology for the analysis of subcultures. Nowadays, the studies on subcultures have a strong ethnographic focus. Due to terminological proliferation and a descriptive approach, it is difficult to compare them on a common basis.
Textual semiotics, through the concept of semiosphere developed by Lotman, allows to go back to the intuitions of Hebdige, organizing the semiotic elements already present in his work into a wider system of interpretation. The semiosphere offers a coherent theoretical horizon as a basis for further analysis, and a new methodological perspective focusing on the cultural. In this thesis for the first time the work of Lotman is applied to the study of a subculture.
Research Interests:
The third KISMIF International Conference “Keep It Simple, Make It Fast! (KISMIF) DIY Cultures, Spaces and Places” was help in Porto, Portugal, between 18th July and 21st July 2016. This edition was once again focused on underground... more
The third KISMIF International Conference “Keep It Simple, Make It Fast! (KISMIF) DIY Cultures, Spaces and Places” was help in Porto, Portugal, between 18th July and 21st July 2016. This edition was once again focused on underground music, but directing its attention this time towards the analysis of DIY cultures’ relationship to space and places. Thus, we challenged students, junior and senior teachers/researchers, as well as artists and activists, to come to the KISMIF International Conference and present works which explore the potential of the theoretical and analytical development of the intersection of music scenes, DIY culture and space under a multidimensional and multifaceted vision. Our intention was to enrich the underground scenes and DIY cultures analysis by producing innovative social theory on various spheres and levels, as well as focusing on the role of DIY culture in late modernity. Indeed, the role of music and DIY cultures is once more an important question — taking place in a world of piecemealed yet ever-present change. The space, spaces, places, borders, zones of DIY music scenes are critical variables in approaching contemporary cultures, their sounds, their practices (artistic, cultural, economic and social), their actors and their contexts. From a postcolonial and glocalized perspective, it is important to consider the changes in artistic and musical practices with an underground and/or oppositional nature in order to draw symbolic boundaries between their operating modalities and those of advanced capitalism. Territorialization and deterritorialization are indelible marks of the artistic and musical scenes in the present; they are related to immediate cosmopolitanisms, to conflicting diasporas, new power relations, gender and ethnicity.