ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a dramatic example of the interplay between corporate marketing strategy and subcultural resistance. It draws on a cultural criminology perspective to explore the interrelated social processes that give rise to the culture and subcultures of crime and the criminalization of culture. The chapter also describes deep connections between subcultural resistance, the social control and criminalization of dissidence, and business success in the postmodern order. In the subcultural world of one-percenters, one's lack of success as defined by the dominant culture is not regarded as a source of embarrassment; rather, it is embraced as a mark of distinction. The marketing of biker style to middle-class Americans stands only as one of the more striking instances of the process by which the economics of style comes to dominate the politics of cultural resistance. Bikers do not avoid lower-class troubles; they amplify them as a way of demonstrating their distinctiveness.
