Hebdige’s classic work on subculture shows us much about how those commonly referred to as the dominated, do in fact resist this domination in complex ways.
“If we emphasize integration and coherence at the expense of dissonance and discontinuity, we are in danger of denying the very manner in which the subcultural form is made to crystallize, objectify and communicate group experience.” (79)
“There is no reason to suppose that subcultures spontaneously affirm only those blocked ‘readings’ excluded from the airwaves and the newspapers (conscioussness of subordinate status, a conflict model of society, etc.). They also articulate, to a greater or lesser extent, some of the preferred meanings and interpretations, those favoured by and transmitted through the authorized channels of communication. The typical members of a working-class youth culture in part contest and in part agree with the dominant definitions of who and what they are, and there is a substantial amount of shared ideological ground not only between them and the adult working-class culture (with its muted tradition of resistance) but also between them and the dominant culture (at least in its more ‘democratic’, accessible forms). (86)
