Is there a ‘post-socialist hipster’? Exploring hipsterfication in Prague

Stettler, A., & Kukeli, G. (2026). Is there a ‘post-socialist hipster’? Exploring hipsterfication in Prague. Social & Cultural Geography, 1–33. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2026.2656348

In recent decades, ‘hipster’ has emerged as a cultural label for aesthetic irony, curated authenticity, and nonconformist consumption practices. This study explores the phenomenon of hipsterfication, a form of gentrification driven by hipster-like reappropriation and consumption, manifesting in both material and performative expressions that can be labelled as ‘hipster’. Focusing on Karlín, a former industrial neighbourhood in Prague now emblematic of hipster-like urban change, the research explores how global subcultural trends interact with local socio-historical legacies. By deploying a mixed-methods framework, including thematic literature analysis, fieldwork, and spatial mapping, the study constructs a typology of hipsterfication and introduces the Hipster Mapping Framework (HMF) as an analytical tool. By analysing two localities in Karlín, the study’s central contribution lies in identifying locally embedded instances of post-socialism’s continuity and anti-continuity within the context of hipsterfication in the neighbourhood. It reveals contradictions regarding the socialist legacy and the paradoxical appropriation of marginalized Roma culture, underscoring hipsterfication’s entanglement with post-socialist memory and exclusion.