Straight Edge Youth Movement: the Core Values and Cultural Practices

Subcultural issues were in marginal position in Soviet and Russian academic research for quite a long time. Youth subcultures and their social and cultural practices became the subject of Russian sociological analysis much later than it had happened in the European youth studies. The first Soviet researches on youth subcultures appeared only in the early 1980s. This situation dramatically changed in the 1990s due to the serious political and economic crisis, when the youth became one of the most important and visible social groups. During the last decade of the 20th century, the youth problems were studied in different dimensions and aspects. On the one hand, the researches mentioned a lack of political activism among the young people; on the other hand, there was a big attention to the youth as to an important part of the whole body of voters and as to a new emerging group of consumers. The first decade of the 21st century was marked by an intensification of the process of patriotic upbringing programs development; the officials were producing the programs of work with aggressive and extremist youth groups. In the modern political discourse, the youth is the most important object of analysis, research and control. In the modern socio-cultural and political context, Russian researches find it reasonable to investigate those youth subcultures, which have activist resources and a strict value system. This article deals with the straight edge subculture, which can be described as a classical subcultural formation with clear values and ideology, traditional identification practices, and which is known for its antisocial rhetoric and rejection of the consumer ideology. In the first part of the article, the origins and stages of straight edge value system formation are analyzed. In the second part, the author demonstrates structural heterogeneity of the subculture, distinguishing the softline and the hardline subdivisions inside the body of the straight edge subculture, and also examines the social and cultural practices of straight edgers (consuming practices, food practices, body practices, and communication and recreation practices). The third part of the article is devoted to the Russian straight edge community and its specificities.

straight edge, resistance, subculture, youth, punk