ABSTRACT
This chapter presents subcultures as discursively constituted social groups emerging largely as a reaction to the dominant values and discourses of mainstream modern culture. Culture is arguably increasingly fragmented via constantly burgeoning subcultures, it aims to unearth and highlight the values coalescing around subcultures that have long been overlooked in marketing and consumer research fields. The chapter focuses on extant studies in various disciplines to reveal the possible motivations behind the emerging subcultural ethos that indicate overt disjunction from that of mainstream culture. It explores the dynamic value systems that may affect the process of fragmentation in the culture and the development of the subcultural ethos in various forms in contemporary society. The ideology of consumerism is largely problematized due to its detrimental consequences for the society, environment, and culture. Consumers who have antagonistic stances against consumerism mainly stress the values of frugality, simplicity, community, integrity, anti-materialism, environmentalism, humanism, animal rights, social equality, pacifism, and the like.
