The Skateboarding Culture From the Underground Movement Into the Mass Culture

By Brian Gibson

In 2016, it was announced that skateboarding would be featured at the Olympics in Tokyo, Japan, for the first time. Skateboarding entered the mainstream with its niche industry and media after sixty years of existence as an underground activity frequently referred to as a fad.

This book analyzes the origin and development of the skateboarding subculture, which was influenced by changes in American mass culture.

• Language: English
• Publisher: vincenzo nappi
• Release date: Dec 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215056813

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

IN 2016, SKATEBOARDING was announced to be for the first time included at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan. After sixty years of its history, Skateboarding found its way from the underground activity, often labeled as a fad, into the mass culture, with its own niche industry and media. The focus of this thesis is to analyze the events that led to such a major shift. Moreover, this thesis puts emphasis on the skateboarding subculture and its values, which are connected with American values.

When a man talks about culture in general, there are many ways how to define this term. It is caused by the fact that these definitions usually list different features of the culture. Some definition includes, for example, language, beliefs, attitudes, etc., while another one includes values, experiences, or traditions. The definitions are not mutually exclusive. One definition usually only omits what another one states and vice versa, but they are mostly very similar. To give an example, Ting-Toomey and Chung define culture as follows: Culture is a learned meaning system that consists of patterns of traditions, beliefs, values, norms, meanings, and symbols that are passed on from generation to the next and are shared to varying degrees by interacting members of a community. Another definition states that Culture is The deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, social hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relationships, concepts of the universe and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving. Both definitions agree that culture is something shared among a certain group of people. They may only differ in the description of the features the groups have in common. Culture, as such, is continually evolving as it faces the changes in reality. Even though individuals are the producers as well as products of culture, they are not the ones by whom this change is caused. It is the social subgroups and subcultures that are the agents of this development. As had been previously said, culture involves beliefs, values, norms, meanings, attitudes, religion, social hierarchies, and many