Subcultural Affiliation Research Articles

Examining Average Age at First Marriage within Orthodox Judaism: A Large Community‐Based Study

AbstractMarriage trends across global communities are influenced by demographic and cultural factors. The marriage age of secular Americans, and multiple religious groups are affected by gender and religious affiliation, but this has not been examined in Orthodox Jewish subcultures. This study explored how gender, cultural affiliation, and shifting cultural affiliation affect the age at first marriage within Orthodox Jewish subcultures differing in openness to Western culture: Yeshiva Orthodoxy and Modern Orthodoxy. Respondents (n= 3865) provided information about themselves and members of their family but respondents’ information was excluded to increase sample representativeness, focusing instead on the 8856 family members. Gender, subcultural affiliation, and individual cultural shifting were all found to affect the age of the first marriage. We interpreted these results in the context of varying cultural beliefs, education, and a perceived surplus of available women. Further examination of related factors may aid community efforts to support individuals in their pursuit of finding marriage partners.

Health determinants in men of the Bear subculture compared with the MSM population. Literature review.

A number of health problems are more common in the population of men who have sex with men (MSM) as compared with the general population. At the same time, research reveals that the MSM population is far from homogeneous, and that subcultural affiliation is one of the characteristics that should be taken into account in health analyses of this group. One of the subcultures among MSM that has received growing interest from researchers in recent years, is the Bear community. It originated in the USA and comprises men - mostly homosexual or bisexual - who are characterized by larger, massive or muscular figure, and by distinctive male phenotypic traits - especially body hair pattern, including facial hair. The most significant health determinants in this group include a higher prevalence of behaviors contributing to negative health outcomes as compared with other MSM, elevated BMI values, as well as exposure to multiple stigma - both sexual minority and weight stigma. Research to date has shown that these characteristics of Bears have significant implications for their mental and sexual health. The article aims to review the literature, and to discuss the practical and the clinical implications of the studies conducted thus far in this population. The summary gives practical recommendations regarding both the support for Bear men in clinical practice, and the design of adequate and effective health promotion interventions for members of this unique community.

Values of Professional Sphere in Youth Subcultures

Background: Solving the problem of professional self-determination is an important task of social development in adolescence. All social functioning of the personality takes place in the context of culture, with subculture being one of its components. Objective: Identification of peculiarities of ideas about professional values in different youth subcultures. Methods: The respondents are young people belonging to the subcultures “rock” and “anime”, and those who do not belong to any subcultures, a total of 180 people. The techniques “Career Anchors” by E. Schein and “Terminal values questionnaire” by I.G. Senin were used. The methods of statistical processing are Spearman correlation analysis, Friedman criterion, Mann-Whitney criterion. Results: The differences of ideas about professional values in different subcultures and at the persons who do not refer themselves to any subcultures are revealed. The results describe the preferences of different career anchors and their consistency or inconsistency towards the terminal values of the professional sphere. Conclusion: Taking into account the subcultural affiliation of young people with the psychological support of their professional self-determination can influence the effectiveness of work with youth.

Toward a theory of subcultural mosaic: Fragmentation into and within subcultures

We present an integrated and more nuanced analysis of the observed tendency toward eclectic, fragmented, and paradoxical subcultures in contemporary society. Through a critical ethnographic approach, we investigate the factors contributing to the motives that impel people to seek subcultural membership, which leads to fragmentation. We interview people who are avid participants of music-based subcultures. Findings reveal that subcultural antagonism and identity politics are the two factors guiding fragmentation into subcultures in contemporary society. People seek solace in membership in multiple subcultures since each subculture provides a distinct escape from different oppressions perceived in the mainstream. This cultivates the impetus for fragmentation within subcultures. Subcultural fragmentation is voluntary, resistive, and subversive. The constant fragmentation and the multiplicity and fluidity of subcultural memberships give rise to what we call a radical subcultural mosaic referring to eclectic subcultural affiliation and composite subcultural memberships fermenting presentational discourses of resistance. Members of the radical subcultural mosaic seek agency and collectivity, creativity in heterogeneity, and propose novel alternative modes of living.

Detection of Groups in Non-Structured Data

This paper describes a method to automatically discover features which distinguish the language use of cultural subgroups operating within the same broader language/culture. Sociolinguists have long known that special features such as vocabulary use, phonetic features (like accents), and syntactic characteristics develop within the in-group language of frequently interacting subgroups. These features set apart the group's language from the discourse of others speaking the same broader language. Our interest is to learn these features automatically and use them to distinguish the writing of one subgroup from another. The s pecial vocabulary and jargon of various subgroups has often been catalogued. This research focuses instead on syntactic differences which can be learned from digital text and the specialized use of vocabulary which is not topic or domain specific (e.g. we deliberately omit domain related jargon.) Our main data source is blogs and related discussions from a number of North American subculture groups, such as radical feminists and militia groups.In this paper we present our findings on looking for blogs whose participants have a particular subcultural affiliation, designated as “blogs of interest.” Our hypothesis is that we can ignore the particular topic of a blog discussion, through means described in the paper, and isolate other linguistic indicators that help us determine whether or not a blog is “of interest”We start with an overview of the process of training our system and describe its use in identifying blogs of the desired cultural subgroup. We then describe in detail the training process in which a series of grams are scored and aggregated to find key, highly indicative blog passages. The last section reports on an experiment we conducted that proved the concept against several North American English language blogging communities

‘Generic Misery Music’? Emo and the Problem of Contemporary Youth Culture

This article examines the Australian newspaper coverage of the Emo youth cultural movement in relation to two incidents that contributed to its growing inclusion in mainstream media discourse: the February 2007 murder of 15-year-old Carly Ryan and the April 2007 suicides of 16-year-old friends Jodie Gater and Stephanie Gestier. The deaths of the three young women were frequently linked to their apparent involvement in the Emo movement, which was described as a dangerous and worrying development in youth culture. However, specific concerns about Emo were frequently subsumed into broader anxieties about young people more generally, particularly in relation to concerns associated with self-harm, unsupervised internet use and school bullying. The disinclination among participants of this movements to identify as Emo or to challenge the media's framing of Emo culture has contributed much to the media's redefinition of Emo as a characteristic of ‘kids today’ rather than a specific subcultural affiliation.

Life After (Straightedge) Subculture

This paper uses 20 in-depth interviews with individuals who formerly identified as straightedge to explore a largely overlooked but potentially important dimension of youth subcultures: life after subculture. Interviews illustrate the potential importance of life after subculture for gaining a fuller understanding of subculture and indicate that residue from former subcultural affiliation can be a marker of a group’s relative substance. Interviews additionally underscore problems with prevailing theoretical models of subculture and support the claim that approaches to and conceptions of subculture should attend to phenomenological levels of analysis and potentialities.

“Just Emotional People”? Emo Culture and the Anxieties of Disclosure

In an article in the Sunday Tasmanian shortly after the deaths of Melbourne teenagers Jodie Gater and Stephanie Gestier in 2007, Tasmanian Catholic Schools Parents and Friends Federation president Bill Button claimed: “Parents are concerned because all of a sudden their child, if they have access to a computer, can turn into an Emo” (qtd. in Vowles 1). For a few months in 2007, the dangers of emo and computer use were significant themes in Australian newspaper coverage. Emo, an abbreviation of the terms “emocore” or “emotional hardcore”, is a melodic subgenre of punk rock music, characterised by “emotional” or personal themes. Its followers, who adopt a look that includes black stovepipe jeans, dyed black hair and side-parted long fringes, might merely have been one of the many “tribes” (Bennett 605) that characterise contemporary youth culture. However, over an approximately five-month period in 2007, the deaths of three teenagers in two separate incidents—the murder Carly Ryan in February and the suicides of Jodie Gater and Stephanie Gestier in April—were linked to the emo subculture and to the social networking site MySpace, both of which were presented as dangerous and worrying developments in contemporary youth culture.

Authenticating Subcultural Identities

This article discusses the hybrid language practices of presenters of hip-hop and reggae programs in Flemish niche media. A qualitative linguistic analysis shows that different varieties of English are employed depending on the particular subcultural affiliation of these programs. In-depth interviews with presenters reveal that in using African American and Jamaican English, they authenticate their subcultural membership vis-à-vis their listeners. It is concluded that by mixing these varieties with standard American English and Dutch, presenters exemplify an adherence to a “hybrid authenticity,” in which the global (subcultural) and the local are creatively fused.

‘Generally Speaking People are in it for the Cycling and the Beer': Bicycle Couriers, Subculture and Enjoyment

From a study comprising of interviews, ethnography and a survey, this paper examines the cultural affiliation of a group of workers in a dangerous and unconventional occupation – bicycle couriering. Returning to the work of Howard Becker, this article examines cultural practices and sensibilities of bicycle couriers, principally in the UK. The idea of a distinct ‘courier culture’ is found to be important to couriers. The article also contributes to debates surrounding the concept of ‘subculture’, arguing that it is still a relevant descriptive concept. Further, the role of enjoyment as a factor in the subcultural affiliation of bicycle messengers is examined.

Male Drug Abuse, Criminality and Subcultural Affiliation in a Career Perspective

Degree of connection to the criminal underworld was the basis for typologic research on 698 male drug abusers; interviews as well as official records were used. Four types were distinguished: The addicted criminals seemed to resemble the groups dominant in Sweden from the 1950s to the 1970s. An early crime debut and criminal offenses in youthful years characterized their deviant careers. Drugs and criminal activities coexisted with an often very high intake of alcohol and the most difficult childhood and adolescence conditions compared to the other types. The criminal addicts had fewer recorded acts of juvenile delinquency. Their drug abuse was severe and occurred later in life, as criminality did, but tended to accelerate very rapidly. Their subcultural affiliation was probably as strong as that of the addicted criminals. A large group called low-crime addicts had a weak subgroup affiliation. The “normal” abuse pattern, with cannabis as the first substance used and a gradual shift to more severe opioid and CNS stimulant abuse, was most true of this type. Probably the drug abuse played a role in the development of the criminal pattern. Emotionally unstable addicts with little or no criminality had the best education, job situation and social relations. Multiple drug abuse and abuse of legal drugs were common. Mental ill-health was characteristic for this group. The results show that drug abusers in Sweden cannot be seen as a homogenous group of individuals, that they do not commit crimes only in order to finance their habit, and that the history of narcotics use in Sweden, with its strong connection to a criminal subculture, is highly relevant to this sample.

Personality and dogmatism among selected groups of orthodox jews.

Four groups of male Orthodox Jews differing in current religious practices and educational affiliation were administered the California Psychological Inventory and the Dogmatism Scale. Matched tetrads of 30 subjects each controlled for age, social class, and generation (how long the subject's family had been in the United States) were then formed. For the analysis of scores of the California Psychological Inventory, Gough's college norms were used. Significant group differences in personality and dogmatism were found, supporting the importance of subcultural religious affiliation as a determinant of personality and dogmatism.

Hospitalization and presenting problems

as cultural or subcultural affiliation, administrative policy, and a history of previous hospitalization. These findings, including those pertaining to inpatient versus outpatient treatment assignment decisions, continue to receive corroboration from more recent studies conducted at the urban mental health center with which the authors are associated. '4-2° Yet many of these correlations are difficult to interpret. They can be and often are cited to support diametrically opposed conelusions and inferences. For example, does the association between lower socioeconomic status and inpatient treatment assignment signify mere correlation or, more important, a causal relationship reflecting class bias of middle-class professionals in their response to lower-class behavioral styles? The charge is often enough and easily enough made, but what truth it contains has been difficult to ascertain. Similarly, does the repeatedly demonstrated association e'-24 between inpatient treatment and previous inpatient experience mean that such experience functions as a biasing factor inducing the decision-maker, in assessing the current difficulty, to assume greater severity and gravity than is warranted, thus increasing the likelihood of certain inpatient treatment assignments, as was thought to be the case, for instance, by Richart and Milner? z~ Addressing these two questions and presenting data from a recent communitywide survey, this paper examines the presenting problems of all adults, 18 years and over, who applied for psychiatric care over a period of 1 year (unduplicated count). Except for some important work of a few investigators, 26-28 presenting problems remain a relatively unexplored area. Insofar as they are a link between the observed and the inferred, they can be treated clinically or nonclinically (or both simultaneously) and thus constitute one of the few variables that stand at the interfaces between demographic, psychosocial, and clinical phenomena. Taken at face value and uninterpreted, they can bypass clinical inferences and thereby provide a fruitful, empirically grounded research tool. At times a presenting

The “Psychological Reality” of American‐English Kinship Terms: An Information‐Processing Approach1

This research applies the information‐processing theory of human thinking to an analysis of the psychological reality of American‐English kinship terms. A general model in terms of cognitive structure and process is presented, its theoretical development closely tied to experimental testing. Two tasks involving the manipulation of terms of reference were administered to a sample chosen on the basis of subcultural affiliation; from the resulting data inferences are drawn about how kinship terms are structured in memory. Finally a classification of cognitive structure is presented and compared to the componential model of the componential analyst.