Bio: (1951-) British media theorist and sociologist. Dick Hebdige studied at the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University and became part of the approach of cultural studies that was started at that university. He taught at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and in 1992, he moved to the United States and became the dean of critical studies and founding director of the Writing Program at California Institute of the Arts. Currently, Hebdige works as a professor of studio art, film, and media studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was the director of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, and currently directs the Institute for Research in the Arts ( UCIRA).

In his works, Hebdige uses a Marxist approach that is on the intersection between history and culture to explore the topics of design, media, contemporary art, image, and fashion. In the book Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979), he uses a semiotic analysis of the aesthetics of musical subcultures such as mods, rockers, and punk rockers. He argues that a bricolage of behavior, dress, rituals, and tastes of those youth subcultures signifies an ideological resistance to structural and economic inequalities that are the consequences of the hegemonic and oppressive nature of capitalist society in post-war Britain.

Main works

Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979);

Cut ’n’ Mix: Culture, Identity and Caribbean Music (1987);

Hiding in the Light: On Images and Things (1988).