To Örebro University

Since the mid-1990s, in fandom and music subculture studies, Sarah Thornton’s theory of subcultural capital has dominated the research as a highly influential framework. Drawing on Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital, Thornton suggests that people’s subcultural capital is built on their possession and knowledge of cultural commodities associated with a certain subculture. It helps them to differentiate themselves from members of other groups, and therefore, in their own perception, raises their status among the society. On the other hand, as Thornton (1995) herself emphasizes, her research is “more thoroughly [an analysis] of the cultural worlds of the white majority” in the UK (p. 20). This fact makes us encounter a problematic situation if we use Thornton’s theory directly as a framework when analyzing transcultural music scenes. However, if we appropriate Thornton’s theory into such research as a framework through using it complementarily with theories of cultural transfer, transculturality, and reception, we may be able to open up new horizons in the research on unpopular music. The last two decades have brought valuable appropriations of these literary theories into musicological spheres, and as many scholars have suggested, there are much to do in this direction.

This paper proposes to think on the possibilities of extending Thornton’s theory to transcultural dimensions and generating a theory of subcultural transfer. It tells about recent developments in the use of above-mentioned theories in musicology and presents new theoretical ideas that have emerged from my ongoing research.