Bye bye mon hipster
The ‘hipster’ identity has shifted from counter-cultural non-comformity to a caricatured, almost competitive, desire to find ever-more-obscure band references and fiercely independently produced culture.
The image slid into parody last year when Time magazine proclaimed “take your grandmother’s sweater and Bob Dylan’s Wayfarers, add jean shorts, Converse All-Stars and a can of Pabst and bam — hipster.”
Somewhere in the last six decades, the hipster identity collapsed into a complicated muddle of image and consumer choices. Unpacking the development and subsequent demise of the hipster as desirable counter-cultural identity is the subject of an article recently published by JMSB marketing professor Zeynep Arsel in the Journal of Consumer Research.
Arsel is interested in the theory of marketplace myths – the concept that consumers are looking for marketplace narratives “to complete themselves or make sense of who they are,” like Harley Davidson – the Rebel.
In some cases, that mythological identity can resolve tensions in a particular population. For instance, men who don’t fit into the stereotype of the rugged macho man and who are interested in selfcare, gravitate to the concept of the metrosexual as a way to frame their interests and tastes.
Arsel was exposed to the theoretical underpinnings of market culture when she began reading researchers like Oxford University’s Doug Holt in grad school in Turkey. “The first time I read academic articles, I knew I wanted to do something like that. I didn’t know you could just do this for a living.” She opted to do her PhD at the University of Wisconsin, because of their impressive reputation in the field.
She became interested in Holt’s theories of marketplace myths. Arsel decided to push theory on marketplace mythologies further. “The literature just looks at how the mythology helps people and resolves their identity anxieties,” she explains. “I’m looking at the other side, where the mythology becomes imposed and is ascribed to their personalities,” instead of being chosen.
“Demythologizing Consumption Practices: How Consumers Protect Their Field-Dependent Identity Investments from Devaluing Marketplace Myths,” the article she co-authored with Craig J. Thompson.
The article is based on research she began while studying in Madison, Wis. She conducted a series of interviews starting with a handful of people involved in the local music scene. At that time, about a decade ago, the concept of hipster still had a certain cachet.
But, the word became stigmatized and stereotyped fairly quickly. It went from outsider, to mainstream, and, in so doing, the counter-cultural character of the hipster identity became co-opted.
“It’s no longer this interesting, iconic community that people are aspiring to; it just became the core of American youth culture. It’s just a filler word now,” she said. “There is a life cycle of these mythologies. They fade, especially when they exist as counter-culture.”
What she did find interesting about her interviewees was how aware of and tied to the concept of hipster they were, even as they denied their own claim to the identity.
“Whatever they say, they still rely on the mythology to refute it. It was a very reflexive process,” she said. “It is a consumer culture, so boundary making is about consuming or not-consuming… or by attaching different meanings to cultural objects.”
Some of her informants used their own cultural capital to provide authority to their words. That kind of capital, which provides value yet can’t be quantified, is just one of the intriguing concepts she is interested in as a result of this research project.
She has also been thinking about these concepts in relation to brand identity. The individuals in her research project held on to a counter-cultural identity by distancing from the hipster label as it moved into the mainstream.
For brands that begin as counter-cultural, their own success forces them to either find a more marginal population to market to, or to redefine themselves as mainstream. Arsel cites the current work of one of her MSc students on the Apple brand as an example of this re-branding exercise.
Watch The Last of the Hipsters on YouTube.