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Do the aspects that define the culture and
acculturation of new members of the Texas
football fan base create a subculture within a greater local culture? The fan
base of the University of Texas football program displays the defining
characteristics of a subculture in its shared values, norms, culturally
accepted behaviors, and its material environment and symbols. Both material and
non-material aspects of the Texas football fan base create a unique subculture.
These aspects range from the values, beliefs, and social norms constituting the
non-material culture to the staples of its material culture; decorations,
mascots, buildings, and clothing.
In
order to recognize the UT fan base as a subculture one must look objectively at
the group as a whole and examine its familiar practices and use the sociological
imagination to uncover what makes these practices strange and how they unite
the fan base into a definite subculture.
The Longhorn football fan base exhibits
ethnocentrism in their convictions that other programs fail to measure up to
what the Texas football program and the collegiate community itself have to
offer.
The socialization of those affiliated with
this subculture is influenced by media, family, and peers who are already
acculturated. Which of these is most
influential becomes the question to be pondered.
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