Is it a joke about drugs or sociology?

Decide for yourself on page 89! I know, that makes four questions, and now I'm setting the bar all high for everybody else. But I'm going to give that one to y'all for free, no strings attached. Ok?

Thornton takes great care to point out that discotheques “tend to duplicate structures of exclusion and stratification found elsewhere.” (25) Even within the subculture, hierarchies are present. There are exclusive VIP lounges, differences in drug quality, and a clubber’s inclusion in future events is based on connections made within the current club. Thornton begins her first person account with “Kate”, a woman we quickly learn is highly connected in the club scene. Kate is able to take Thornton to places she never would have gained access to on her own. How is Thornton’s ethnographic study colored by her immediate inclusion in the VIP community of the club subculture? Do you think this affects her work as a whole? What problems or benefits could this have created within her research?

Thornton repeatedly refutes the binaries that have been utilized by scholars within the sociological study of subcultures. At one point, she argues that the “multiple opposition” created by Hebdige in Subculture (i.e. Hebdige’s assertion that subcultures are reacting against the dominant as opposed to within it) is “an orderly ideal which crumbles when applied to historically specific groups of youth”. (93) To Thornton, these binaries do not allow for the intricacies of subcultural participation. Relating this idea back to the specific groups discussed in Subculture, do you think that work would have benefited from Thornton’s analysis?

Through her interpretation of Bourdieu, Thornton coins the term subcultural capital, which she defines as the “means by which young people negotiate and accumulate status within their own social worlds.” (163) Why is it important that Thornton chose to create the idea of subcultural capital instead of working within Bourdieu’s idea of cultural capital? What are the differences between cultural and subcultural capitals?