Subculture: The meaning of style

In "The Meaning of Style" Dick Hebdige portrays subcultures as natural responses to the prevailing ideas and attitudes of the era in which they are formed. He also writes that counter-cultures, that begin as genuine ideological rebellions, are soon factored into the logical framework of the prevailing hegemonic culture. Thereby removing their shock value, and ordering them as just another element within the modern set of attitudes which define a civilization.

Hebdige also makes the point that the Punk movement was unique among the counter cultural movements in that it did not have a set of identifying rules or a strict social ordering. I disagree, one can look at images of punk rock concerts and see the common styles that made up the punk counter culture. Punks were definitely (at least to my eyes) recognizable as punks, that is, they had their own set of loose social rules which made them "punks."

The question I have after reading this is, can a counter culture really view itself as being against the primary culture of the time? Any movement which achieves even a small amount of popularity should be considered as part of the mainstream culture of the time. Counter-culture groups, rather than resisting the popular culture of the time, are just another component of them. For example, Hippies were thought of as a counter culture group. But when people my age think of sixties culture, the hippie movement is usually one of the first images to come to mind. While Dick Hebdige writes that counter culture movements are adapted into the mainstream as a later element in their development, I feel that counter cultures are part of the mainstream once they become a movement in even the slightest sense.