ABSTRACT
This chapter includes a case for subculture's persistent value for researching the social groups and phenomena to which it conventionally apply that term including geeks, nerds, and fans. It agrees that it is important not to view subcultures as "objects" in a realist sense or as discontinuous from the cultural lives of ordinary members of the common culture. The chapter explores how people collectively "do subculture" through their everyday social practices, practices that actively construct and negotiate the borders between "subculture and the "mainstream". It outlines the methods behind the empirical materials with which it works, and examines how people "do subculture" within the context of a geek culture scene. The chapter focuses on three themes that emerged from the analysis: the career-like nature of participation over time, the various ways that people experienced their scenic contemporaries as constituting communities, and the evaluative discourses embedded in their talk.
