Capturing the Structure of Musically-Based Youth Subcultures: The Case of ?Emo?

While the study of subcultures has largely been abandoned by American sociologists over the last two decades, we propose a methodological approach that takes seriously Fine and Kleinman's (1979) call for the examination of subcultural artifacts in the context of an interactionist framework. Using the specific case of "emo," a youth-based musical subculture that has emerged through the punk and hardcore scenes within the last decade, we develop a strategy for identifying a representative subcultural sample and using the artifacts of self-proclaimed emo bands to describe and analyze the organization and structure of the emo community. This framework allows us to examine subcultural adolescent groups in two ways: as local formal groupings (i.e. bands), and as a larger, more global emo "community" (comprised of both producers/bands and consumers/audience). We conclude by examining the extent to which the contours of subcultural communities can be adequately understood in musical, spatial, ideological, or temporal terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]