The Class Dimension of Hip Rebellion

Abstract

Given that hipsters typically come from the “professional middle class,” how are we to make sense of the interest they have in objects that have a working-class aura about them: things like Pabst beer, trucker hats, and secondhand work shirts? I present two ways of interpreting these objects: as markers of “cool” within status games played by hipsters and as acknowledgment of a kind of solidarity between hipsters and the working class. In both cases, the class dimension is covered over in the consciousness of hipsters. With an awareness of the class dimension of what hipsters do, perhaps we can reconfigure hip rebellion so as to increase the likelihood that people attracted to it will channel their rebellious urges in anticapitalist directions. One direction they should be encouraged to go in is that of learning how to work with working-class people to transform capitalist social arrangements, which is what leftists from the professional middle class must do as well.

Keywords:

• Hip Rebellion
• Hipsters
• Professional Middle Class
• Working Class

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Gregg Horowitz, Lucius Outlaw, John Stuhr, Michael Sullivan, and especially José Medina for their comments on a very early draft of this article. Thanks, too, to Mary Butterfield for her remarks on a later draft. Finally, special thanks to Rethinking Marxism's reviewers of this article (including Vincent Lyon-Callo), from whom I learned a great deal as I took up the many excellent suggestions they made for improving the piece.

Notes

¹As most readers probably know, Pabst is a brand of beer. Trucker hats require some explanation. In Hip: The History, John Leland writes, “For the uninitiated, the trucker hat, or mesh hat, is a baseball cap with a foam-padded front panel and a one-size-fits-all plastic snap in back. It is an ugly piece of work. Classic models feature logos for Von Dutch ‘kustomizers,’ Stroh's beer, or other emblem of their blue-collar roots” (Leland 2004, 349). The secondhand work shirts that figure most prominently in the hipster aesthetic are ones that once belonged to employees of gas stations and bowling alleys.

²It should be noted that whereas subcultures of the working class are the main focus of Cohen (1972) and the authors who make use of his approach in the classic text Resistance Through Rituals (Clarke, Jefferson, and Roberts 2006), the focus of my paper is on a subculture (if it can be called that) of the professional middle class.

³Leland's book places considerable emphasis on the racial and, more specifically, African American dimension of hip.

⁴One indicator of membership in the PMC is the wealth and income of one's parents. A 2009 New York Times article points out that many of the hipsters living in Williamsburg (in Brooklyn) have low-wage jobs and yet live in high-rent places because of the financial assistance they receive from their parents (until the recent economic downturn, at least) (Haughney 2009). I discuss other indicators of hip people's membership in the PMC later in this essay.

⁵It should be noted, however, that the material in Lanham's book was nominated for the Margaret Mead Award, presented by the Society for Applied Anthropology and the American Anthropology Society to those who interpret “anthropological data and principles in ways that make them more meaningful and accessible to a broadly concerned public” (http://www.sfaa.net/mead/mead.html).

⁶There are now many examples of such studies, as longtime readers of this journal no doubt know. Among the more recent and most relevant to this paper's focus on hip is Lyon-Callo 2008.

⁷Although the distinction I employ in this section might suggest that “the working class” should be understood as consisting solely of nonprofessionals, I believe that such an understanding would be too narrow, not just because many people typically classified as “working class” do the task-conceiving work of professionals (Young 1990, 217–22), but also because the term the working class has connotations that the term nonprofessional lacks, connotations we should remain attentive to and examine. We should, for example, critically examine the stereotypical image that often comes to people's minds when they think of the working class—white guys in hard hats—an image that should be supplemented with the image of, say, women of color.

⁸Douglas Holt distinguishes between people with high and low levels of cultural capital (HCCs and LCCs) and finds that “HCCs experience the potential for homogenization of commodity goods to a far greater extent than do LCCs and, thus, are far more energetic in their attempts to individuate their consumption” (Holt 1998, 14). For Holt's discussion of how HCCs establish their sense of individuality through “authenticity” and “connoisseurship,” see Holt 1998, 14–7.

⁹They even do this while working, as Lloyd observes: hipsters employed in the service industry police the boundaries separating the cool from the uncool by providing poor service or being rude to perceived outsiders, for instance, or, if they work in bars, “juicing the tips” (Lloyd 2006, 109–10, 193–4). See the profile of “The WASH (Waitstaff and Service Hipster),” “the most common type of Hipster,” according to Lanham (Lanham 2002, 66–8).

¹⁰For more on indie music, see Lanham (2002, especially 12, 18–20, 116–25).

¹¹See especially McClelland (2008). See also Walker (2008, 99–100, 103–7, 112–4), where he talks about “PBR's blue-collar, honest-workingman, vaguely anticapitalist image” (Walker 2008, 113).

¹²See the discussion of “youth” and class in Clarke, Hall, Jefferson, and Roberts 2006 (1993).

¹³“Yuppies” are young urban professionals, “preps” are prep-school attendees, and “suburbanites” is a term of contrast in that hipsters tend to be urban dwellers.

¹⁴Walker speaks of the consumption of Pabst among “alternative people” as an instance of “symbolic solidarity with the blue-collar heartland trump[ing] the real thing” (Walker 2008, 113). Leland makes related remarks about hip's relation to racial inequality: “At its worst, hip glosses over real division and inequity, pretending that the right argot and record collection can outweigh the burden of racial history. White hipsters often use their interest in black culture to claim moral high ground, while giving nothing back … Hip can be a self-serving release from white liberal guilt, offering cultural reparations in place of the more substantive kind. This is white supremacy posing as appreciation” (Leland 2004, 6). Similar things could be said of the keffiyeh, a cloth “initially sported by Jewish students and Western protestors to express solidarity with Palestinians” but that “has become a completely meaningless hipster cliché fashion accessory” (Haddow 2008).

¹⁵See Lanham, who in the following passage plays on the idea that hipsters don't really want to be identified as doing the work represented by the secondhand work shirts they wear: “Older Hipsters should avoid being overly flashy or kitschy. If you are over thirty-five and still wear bowling shirts, people will not realize you are being kitschy and will just assume you hand out shoes at the bowling alley for a living” (Lanham 2002, 155).

¹⁶It should be noted, however, that trucker hats probably have the additional allure of representing a way of life imagined to bear some resemblance to that depicted in Jack Kerouac's On the Road, a text that has done much to shape the hipster lifestyle. For a discussion of the racial (and class) connotations trucker hats have, see Leland 2004, 349–53. There Leland points out that trucker hats constitute one element of “white trash chic.” Lander suggests the same in his entry on irony (#50), where, after talking about the irony with which “white” people wear trucker hats, he writes about them “getting together to have a ‘white trash’ night, where they will eat Kentucky Fried Chicken, drink Bud Light, and watch Larry the Cable Guy or The Marine, or maybe listen to Kid Rock or P.O.D. These events allow white people to experience things they are supposed to hate, all while feeling better about their own lives, decisions, and cultured tastes” (Lander 2008, 63–4).

¹⁷Lloyd writes: “New arrivals in Wicker Park, whether ‘starving artists’ or more affluent young professionals, tend to be well educated. The absolute number of neighborhood residents possessing a bachelor's degree or higher almost tripled from 1990 to 2000. In 1990, Wicker Park, with its high percentage of foreign-born residents, had a much higher than average (for Cook Country) percentage of adults lacking a high school degree; in 2000, the percentage of adult residents with undergraduate or graduate degrees significantly exceeded Cook Country norms” (2006, 115). Future research on hipsters would do well to pay close attention to hipsters’ educational levels and the kinds of schools they have attended.

¹⁹Carter writes, “The working class cannot forget the inequalities in work, income, lifestyle and social function that it absorbs daily. In relation to the PMC, workers not only recognize the social and economic advantages of this ‘more valued social group,’ they see members of the PMC, justly and unjustly, as authorities who unravel how and why things happen. They know that the PMC gives and withholds knowledge that affects and restricts their lives—at school, work, over TV, in the welfare office or at the family counseling center. In these arenas and so many others, members of the PMC personify the control that society holds over their lives” (1979, 118). Toward the beginning of the twentieth century, Jane Addams observed tension between middle-class social workers and the working-class people they served. The latter were not accustomed to dealing with people from the middle class who had the interests of working-class people in mind (Addams 2002 [1902], 15). Toward the beginning of this century, Leondar-Wright records a similar experience: “When I was a tenant organizer knocking on doors, most people met me with distrust, assuming I was more likely to threaten them in some way than to help them. Some figured I might be a bill collector, parole officer, truant officer, child welfare worker, or building management. Others recognized that I was an earnest do-gooder, but they didn't have good associations with earnest do-gooders” (Leondar-Wright 2005, 103; cf. Gibson-Graham 2003, 62).

¹⁸Linda Stout observes, “Low-income folks believe that middle-class folks won't stick around. When the going gets tough, they'll leave. It's a vicious cycle: it happens so much that there's no trust, so middle-class people wonder why they should stick around if they're not trusted” (quoted in Leondar-Wright 2005, 133).

²⁰Leondar-Wright says that the first few times she was accused of being classist by working-class people, she felt “devastated” but also “critical of the messy or inaccurate way they communicated” (2005, 103). Ehrenreich writes: “From the vantage point of the professional middle class, those ‘below’ do not speak clearly, or intelligibly, or interestingly. Hence the all-too-common, unconsciously patronizing judgment that a particular representative of the poor or the working class is ‘articulate,’ implying that the rest are not. Hence, too, the old sociological prejudice that the ‘lower classes’ are limited and parochial in their utterances, or not worth listening to. We tend to think of the problem, if we think of it at all, as a simple lack on the part of the ‘lower’ classes—most likely, a simple lack of vocabulary. Stereotypes of verbally deprived workers come to mind: Archie Bunker with his malapropisms, Ed Norton braying dumbly on The Honeymooners” (Ehrenreich 1989, 258–9).

²¹As Ehrenreich observes, “people with college educations have a certain expectation of how a large group of people should interact, based really on the academic world … The whole idea that a coming together of people on the left should be something like an academic learning experience is not good, I think” (Ehrenreich quoted in Leondar-Wright 2005, 109; see also Ehrenreich and Ehrenreich 1979b, 316). Carter quotes a number of working-class activists who felt out of place in meetings that were run like college seminars. Some examples: “I was terrified at those meetings. Every time I opened my mouth I was afraid I was going to say something dumb. Everyone else could talk so well and seemed to know so much. It reminded me of how I used to feel in school—only this time I was in a whole roomful of teachers. Jesus was I out of place. I felt kinda like some creature from another planet”; “My first real experience with the left was when I joined a study group that was going to study Marx and Lenin and Mao. Everyone in the group, except me and this working class man, had college degrees. Naturally I was terrified to speak. It seemed like they had all the knowledge and I felt judged by it”; “In the group I was in, I always felt very crude and vulgar. I didn't express myself the way they did and I felt bad about it. Back then I didn't really see this in any class way. I just saw them as intellectuals, with knowledge that I could never have” (quoted in Carter 1979, 98, 113, 113–4). Croteau writes, “The professional middle class is based on control of information. It should come as no surprise, then, that social movements made up primarily of members of the middle class are preoccupied with the issue of knowledge, information and expertise … [T]he middle-class emphasis on political information is akin to what workers often refer to as ‘book learning’… [T]he emphasis on education—no matter how well intentioned—ends up contributing to workers’ perception that they are not qualified to take part in public life” (quoted in Leondar-Wright 2005, 120; see also 133–5). Finally, in Bridging the Class Divide, Stout writes, “Many middle-class people are comfortable with theoretical, impersonal discussion in which people just jump in when they want to speak. This format reflects a college classroom model (and a male model) familiar to those who are college educated. For low-income people (many of whom are women), the approach is unfamiliar, and many do not feel comfortable about entering the discussion” (1996, 135; see also 121, 123).

²²Moreover, years of schooling prior to entry into academia can be a time when working-class students learn to remain working class, as Willis argues in Learning to Labor (1977). Consider also Bourdieu, who writes, “The combined effect of low cultural capital and the associated low propensity to increase it through educational investment condemns the least favoured classes to the negative sanctions of the scholastic market, i.e. exclusion or early self-exclusion induced by lack of success. The initial disparities therefore tend to be reproduced since the length of inculcation tends to vary with its efficiency: those least inclined and least able to accept and adopt the language of the school are also those exposed for the shortest time to this language and to educational monitoring, correction and sanction” (Bourdieu 1991, 62).

²³This often involves becoming estranged from their families (see, for example, Lubrano 2004, 47–8, 49–50, 56–9; O'Dair 1995, 201; Christopher 1999, 205; Peckham 1995, 274; Greenwald and Grant 1999, 34).

²⁴Cf. Gibson-Graham's (2003) discussion of William Connolly's ideas about a “politics of becoming.” There they are concerned with how to foster “an ‘ethic of cultivation’ that works against the bodily feelings of panic experienced when naturalized identities are called into question,” and they consider what must be done to “nurture the micropolitical receptivity of subjects to new becomings,” with micropolitics understood, in Connolly's words, as an “assemblage of techniques and disciplines that impinge on the lower registers of sensibility and judgment without necessarily or immediately engaging the conscious intellect” (Gibson-Graham 2003, 57).

²⁵I stress the word might here, because I do not want to give the impression that taste is always and only a function of class conditioning.

²⁶Although I have yet to teach a class devoted solely to these issues, I have taught these issues in a number of classes. I could say much about texts to use in presenting critiques of capitalism and examining class, but here I'll just mention two things that have, in my experience, generated good discussion among students about consumerism and hip rebellion: the online video The Story of Stuff (www.storyofstuff.com) and much of the chapter “I Hate Myself and Want to Buy” in Heath and Potter (2004).