Urban Indian Subcultures: What is a Subculture? 

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I have received some interesting responses to my query — are there any subcultures in urban India that go beyond religion, caste, class and language?

But even before I try answer that question, I need to answer another: what is a subculture?

Let’s start with culture first. Culture is the way of life for an entire society, the sum total of the lifestyles of its individual members. To understand a society’s culture, you need to understand how its members form their identities — from the things they own, the experiences they have, the relationships they share, and the meaning they create (through literature, art and music).

Every society has a mainstream culture, several subcultures and/ or underground cultures, and, rarely, even a counterculture.

The mainstream culture is the sum of high culture that is valued by the society (classical music/ traditional dance) and popular culture (blockbuster movies/ prime time soaps) that is liked by most of the members in the society.

A group of people belong to a subculture when their culture is different from the mainstream culture of the society they live in. The members of the subculture may be distinctive in terms of demographics (age, race, ethnicity, class, location, and/or gender) and often signal their membership through a distinctive and symbolic use of style (fashions, mannerisms, and argot) and taste (music, books, movies). Subcultures often, but not always, start as urban youth sub-cultures.

A subculture may be considered alternative or underground depending on how opposed it is to the mainstream culture (ex. rave culture). An alternative culture that achieves critical mass and persists for a period of time may be called a counterculture (ex. beatniks or hippies).

So, the starting point to study the subcultures in a society is to study its mainstream culture.

In the next post in this series, then, I’ll try to answer another difficult question: what is (the mainstream) Indian culture?

If you want more, here are some links you should check out on Wikipedia — Culture, Lifestyle, Mainstream, Popular Culture, High Culture, Subculture, Western Subcultures, List of Subcultures, Youth Subculture, Urban Culture, Underground Culture, Alternative Culture, Counterculture.