Short Writing Assignment #4 Cultural Reception

Formatting Instructions: 

The paper must be a minimum of 700 words (double spaced, 12pt. Times New Roman font, 1-inch margins), make sure the reference is documented at the end of the paper.

Sociology 419

Writing Assignment #4

Cultural Reception

This writing assignment will be on both the Bryson 1996 article, “Anything But Heavy Metal: Symbolic Exclusion and Musical Dislikes”, and on the Christian Smith chapter from earlier in the semester on subcultural identity theory. 

Bryson shows how musical tastes create symbolic boundaries. Smith claims that symbolic boundaries are essential to the creation of a collective identity for subcultural groups. For this paper, pick a subcultural group that uses taste as a means of creating symbolic boundaries and collective identity, and write about it. 

The Bryson article is about music specifically, but your paper can be about any cultural product that is used as a means of creating boundaries for a specific group. 

For example, take a cult classic film like The Big Lebowski. There is an entire festival now organized around fans of this movie. It’s called Lebowski-Fest. So this is a subcultural group whose symbolic boundaries are all about the consumption/reception of one film. 

Another example is the subcultural group of “Juggaloes.” They define their symbolic boundaries in terms of their music consumption. Specifically, they all love the shock rock/rap group, the Insane Clown Possee. 

Another example is how sometimes gang association is represented by clothing from a particular sports team. So the gang uses cultural consumption in the form of being a fan of a particular team, to create symbolic boundaries. 

The group of people and the tastes that make them a group must be somewhat defined. So, what does NOT work is just to talk about an ill-defined group like “Justin Beiber fans” or something like that. To count as a subcultural group for this assignment, the collective identity of the group must go beyond the simple choice of cultural taste, and be at least somewhat about lifestyle and action choices.