After Sport Culture

TLDR

The subcultural theory of the Birmingham CCCS has faced extensive critique, especially in youth, music, and style studies, yet its application to sporting subcultures has been largely overlooked. The article reviews post‑CCCS scholarship to examine how sporting subcultures shape individuality, difference, collective identity, and cultural resistance. It evaluates Atkinson and Wilson’s claim that bodily performances can resist mainstream constraints, using lifestyle sport culture as illustration. The study proposes a revised agenda for researching subcultures in sport.

Abstract

The subcultural theory associated with the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) has received numerous and wide-ranging critiques. Debate has been particularly prevalent within sociological work on youth, music, and style, a context in which some commentators have rejected the idea of subculture, favoring more fleeting, transient socialites. However, these debates have rarely been considered within the context of the study of sporting subcultures. In this article, the author reviews the post-CCCS oeuvre, exploring the implications for the study of sporting subcultures, questions of individuality, difference, and collective identity, and the possibility and nature of cultural or subcultural resistance. The author evaluates Atkinson and Wilson's proposition that bodily experiences or performances can resist constraints imposed by mainstream culture, illustrating this in the context of lifestyle sport culture. Thus, this article contributes to a revised agenda for the study of subcultures in sport.