Wednesday, May 6, 2020

The Social Structure Of Fashion And Music - 2162 Words

â€Å"Fashion †¦ provides individuals with a key means through which to manage their identities in the context of everyday life† (Bennett, 2005, p.98). Through fashion, individuals are able to construct an identity, and express that very same in order to confer and show their position in society. Their gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality, subculture, generation, etc., are all part of their identity (Bennett, 2005). A person’s taste in e.g. fashion and music is also part of their identity. Groupings of people that share similarities in identity, including but not limited to fashion and music, are called subcultures (Simmel, 1903; Veblen, 1934; Hebdige, 1979; DiMaggio, 1983; Bourdieu, 1984; cited in Alfrey, 2010). The social hierarchies within†¦show more content†¦96). Further, individuals not only use their clothing to express their identity, but to also signal their belonging or allegiance to certain groups of society (Rucker et al., 2009 cited in Bennett, 2005). These aspects satisfy a person’s need to socially adapt, whilst still allowing him to be a distinctive individual within that group (Alfrey, 2010). In everyday life, we are frequently confronted with representations of what is perceived to be ‘normal’, often referred to as mass culture or ‘the mainstream’ (Thornton, 1995). Alfrey (2010) argues that the way we chose to express ourselves mostly happens in relation to the perceived symbols of normality. The apparent pressure of society towards individuals to conform to normality (Dowd and Dowd, 2003, cited in Alfrey, 2010) results in what Barker (2012) describes as the conscious resistance of subcultures against these pressures. On the other hand, Thornton (1995) believes that subcultures and youth do not differ from the norm of society to resist the very same. She believes that sub- and youth cultures differ and distinct themselves through taste and social hierarchies. Research has found that in past decades these patterns of individuals showing their membership to groups has not just happened through shared likings of

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