The Effects of Subcultures on the Broader American Culture
Shannon Kashuba
ANT 101
Michael King
August 10, 2008
Abstract
Subcultures have influenced and been influenced by developments in western culture. I examined the most influential subcultures since the middle ages and their effects. My research includes searching Proquest for scholarly journals and books, our textbook, and even a dictionary definition. I even used information I have learned through past schooling. I have found that there is more reason to fear the disintegration of western culture than I had previously thought. In conclusion, I have found that if we are willing to communicate with our children and each other we can lay a solid foundation in which our society can grow.
Culture is everywhere around us. It is what we do and how we perceive the world. It shows in the way we display our feelings, personalities, and motivations. “Culture is the ways of living built up by a human group and transmitted to succeeding generations.” (Random House Webster’s Dictionary, 2001). As it reads in Cultural Anthropology by Barbara Miller (2007), “The origins of cultural anthropology go back as far as the fifth century B.C….the question of how to define culture has been debated for decades.” Culture is the beliefs we have learned from our parents and the behaviors we have developed from what we believe. These factors alone can determine the direction an individual chooses to take. Besides individual cultures there are microcultures, “a distinct pattern of learned and shared behavior and thinking found within larger cultures.” (Miller, p.14). Examples of microcultures, just to name a few are religion, music, art, media, and even drugs. The effects of these subcultures have had a particularly powerful social impact in the way people have lived their lives, and how they still do today.
As mentioned earlier, we learn from our parents who learned from their parents, each generation...