Subcultures as Regimes of Valuation

Reconceptualizing subcultures, and using the example of present day subcultures organized around the appreciation of craft beer, this essay posits that everyday American life is typified by capitalist logics that cannot be held separate or external to the domain of the cultural, or by extension, the subcultural. Subcultures are explored as spaces where valuation, the assignment of cultural and/or economic worth, occurs in atypical, non-dominant ways that may exist harmoniously with and participate in capitalist markets and that do not necessarily foreclose the possibility of authentic or resistant counter-politics.