Conclusions: An Enactment Approach to Subcultures and Post-Subcultures

Abstract

In the conclusions, we resume the main theoretical and empirical findings of the previous chapters. Under a theoretical point of view, we discuss how our practice-centred approach, based on the concepts of social practices, canon and enactment, can help accounting for the consistent distinctiveness of a subculture and, at the same time, for its plural structures of meanings, avoiding the pitfalls of ‘substantive thinking’. We then point out how a practice-based approach could be also applied to the study of post-subcultures, helping to circumvent the present frontal contraposition (and the stalemate) between subculturalist and post-subculturalist approaches. Under an empirical point of view, we summarise how the three enactments of Milanese dark in the 1980s differed in key aspects such as attitude toward political engagement, practices of socialisation, style and dressing practices, sub-scenes, criteria for the validation of subcultural identities and for gaining subcultural capital, relationship with the public space. At the end of the conclusion, we leave word to our interviewees, who comment the relevance of the experience of subcultural belonging for subsequent processes of identity construction, and ultimately for their own lives.