Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 395-410).

Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-100) Also available in print.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Leicester in association with School of Professional and Continuing Education, University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Cover title. Includes bibliographical references (p. 106-108) Also available in print.

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio University, June, 2003. / Title from PDF t.p.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Texas at Dallas, 2007. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references.

The numerous youth subcultures to emerge since the end of World War Two act as what I call “biopolitical cultural apparatuses” that help subjects navigate the discontinuity in values, labour, and material expectations between the Fordist and neoliberal formations. As such, subcultures play a socializing role, helping subjects adapt to an increasingly precarious and austere social sphere; but they also generate new forms of community, and new experiences of personal and collective agency that can contribute to significant social transformation. Responding to the contemporary body of “post-subcultural” studies, I combine Giorgio Agamben’s analysis of biopolitics and Slavoj Žižek’s treatment of the Lacanian symptom to frame a theory that can highlight the politically progressive elements of subculture, while at the same time acknowledging their complicity with elements of the cultural dominant. Complementing Dick Hebdige’s theory of the incorporation processes to which subcultures are subjected, I offer spatial-temporal incorporation as a predominant way in which subcultural difference is recuperated by patriarchal and capitalist structures. At the same time, the heterotopic spaces subcultures produce enable new solidarities and friendships to develop, and can offer important experiences of alterity within the fluid and individualized regulative structures of late capitalism. I investigate these dynamics through a focus on skateboarding as a subculture that is particularly representative of the kinds of control structures faced by contemporary, Western subjects. My dissertation concludes with a detailed case study of the struggles of skateboarders to maintain and preserve an aging skateboard park in Beasley, a downtown neighbourhood of Hamilton, Ontario. Hamilton’s project to re-brand itself as a post-industrial “hub” for the “creative economy” places the skateboarders in the position of having to manage their (sub)cultural capital in a new way, as developers attempt to gentrify the neighbourhood. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis describes contemporary subcultures as helping subjects navigate the shift from a Fordist to neoliberal society. A combination of Marxian theories about contemporary capitalism, Giorgio Agamben's theories of the apparatus, bare life and the friend, and Jacques Lacan's theories of the symptom are used to understand subcultures as both responding to this shift in values and institutions, and possibly providing forms of community and agency that anticipate a post-capitalist world. A particular focus on skateboarding and the extreme sports industry illustrates these theories. Specific chapters detail the extreme sports industry, the nascent street skateboarding culture in northern Ontario town of Barrie in the nineteen eighties, and the history of Beasley Skateboard Park in downtown Hamilton, Ontario.

No description available.

Hunting is an important recreational activity for many men in the rural south and as such, it represents a backdrop from which to view the social development of masculinity within families and among the community of adult men. Despite the importance of this activity, little research has examined the consumption implications of and socialization into hunting. This project uses the ethnographic methods of participant observation and depth interviews to examine the role of hunting in socializing men through stages of development from neophytes to competent hunters, and describes five groups into which these hunters may develop. While current conceptualizations of community in the consumer research literature, including subcultures of consumption (Schouten and McAlexander 1995), brand communities (Muñiz and O'Guinn 2001), and tribal marketing (Cova and Cova 2002), describe phenomena that are of relatively short duration and are highly market mediated, I suggest an alternate conceptualization of community that includes the long family socialization process--often covering multiple generations within families--and activities that may be less market mediated than those previously studied. / Ph. D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2009. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed February 13, 2009). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Embargoed until 2/1/2011. Includes bibliographical references (p. 317-336).