Subculture wars: the struggle for the vape industry

TY - JOUR

T1 - Subculture wars

T2 - the struggle for the vape industry

AU - Thirlway, Frances

N1 - © 2022 The Authors

PY - 2023/1/12

Y1 - 2023/1/12

N2 - Drawing on a two-year study, I argue that the UK vape industry is engaged in a classificatory struggle between a subcultural industry and its ‘other’, the mainstream industry. I build on Thornton’s analysis of club culture to characterise the subcultural vape industry as a community of taste built round a masculine aesthetic and a commitment to authenticity and DIY practice. Its attachment to complex systems and masculine spaces risked excluding customers without specialist knowledge or interest. The mainstream industry included tobacco companies which promoted vaping as a complementary category to smoking, linking their own vaping products to historic meanings of the cigarette as a lifestyle product. This task was hampered by the toxic legacy of combusted tobacco and its increasing reversion to a generic category rather than a branded product. Finally, the success of the price-focused vaping industry has been largely overlooked, but suggests that for most consumers, electronic cigarettes are still a contrasting category to combusted tobacco and are purchased largely on price. I conclude that the exclusion of a feminised, classed ‘other’ is a defining element of subcultural formation, itself an overwhelmingly male mechanism of group identity construction.

AB - Drawing on a two-year study, I argue that the UK vape industry is engaged in a classificatory struggle between a subcultural industry and its ‘other’, the mainstream industry. I build on Thornton’s analysis of club culture to characterise the subcultural vape industry as a community of taste built round a masculine aesthetic and a commitment to authenticity and DIY practice. Its attachment to complex systems and masculine spaces risked excluding customers without specialist knowledge or interest. The mainstream industry included tobacco companies which promoted vaping as a complementary category to smoking, linking their own vaping products to historic meanings of the cigarette as a lifestyle product. This task was hampered by the toxic legacy of combusted tobacco and its increasing reversion to a generic category rather than a branded product. Finally, the success of the price-focused vaping industry has been largely overlooked, but suggests that for most consumers, electronic cigarettes are still a contrasting category to combusted tobacco and are purchased largely on price. I conclude that the exclusion of a feminised, classed ‘other’ is a defining element of subcultural formation, itself an overwhelmingly male mechanism of group identity construction.

KW - vape industry; subculture; consumption; authenticity; Bourdieu; field analysis

U2 - 10.1111/1468-4446.12981

DO - 10.1111/1468-4446.12981

M3 - Article

SN - 0007-1315

VL - 74

SP - 3

EP - 16

JO - British Journal of Sociology

JF - British Journal of Sociology

IS - 1

ER -