ABSTRACT

This chapter argues that Sarah Thornton's notion of sub cultural capital is still very useful for understanding and describing notions of authenticity, coolness and distinction within sub cultural fields. It presents a case study of a do-it-yourself (DIY) independent music scene in Newcastle, Australia with local, national and global networks, focusing on one young person's attempt to pursue a DIY career. The chapter discusses the ways Pierre Bourdieu's forms of capital are invoked to formulate a niche creative cultural space and to manage threats from outside and within this field'. Thornton sketches out sub cultural capital as a development of Bourdieu's formulations of cultural, social, economic and symbolic capital to cast a closer eye on the symbolic economy of 1990s UK dance culture and the ways in which hierarchical taste cultures are produced and maintained. Thornton highlights how forms of media circulate sub cultural capital, while formal institutions circulate cultural capital.