punk subculture essay

READING HISTORY

Punk, politics and youth culture, 1976-84.

Punk is generally regarded as a defining moment in British cultural history. In its rhetoric and style, punk appeared to encapsulate the socio-economic and political climate of the late 1970s. It seemed to form a distinct youth culture that in turn provoked a media-driven moral panic and prompted notable cultural change. Most significantly, punk appeared to politicise cultural practice at a significant juncture in British history. Its lyrics and iconography commented on society and politics; its approach challenged the prevailing orthodoxies of the music industry; it spawned a samizdat culture that served as an alternative media source of information and exchange; it questioned social and political hierarchies and notions of personal identity.

To date, however, historical accounts of punk remain largely superficial or partial: the relationship between form, content and context has been noted but rarely examined in depth. Over time, punk has been mythologised and absorbed into the broader narrative of cultural and popular music history; few studies have examined punk beyond its point of emergence in 1976–77. Our Leverhulme project intends to redress this by exploring the ways in which punk’s political and cultural meaning formed, fractured and evolved over the 1970s into the 1980s. The aim is to provide an account of punk and its effects that derives from historical record, and that, as such, provides hard evidence of the cultural and political changes it inspired. Our concern is not with denying that punk afforded a cultural space for voices typically excluded from mainstream culture and politics to be heard, or that it allowed for cultural experimentation that challenged the economic and political norms of Britain’s cultural industry, but that such claims need to be based on more than romanticised wishful thinking.

The project’s principal objectives are:

To produce an original history that examines the relationship between punk, politics and youth culture in Britain during the late 1970s and early 1980s
To develop an effective research methodology that draws from across academic disciplines to examine archives, images, objects, sounds and material texts as complementary sources of historical evidence
To build on the interdisciplinary network of scholars founded by the applicants in 2010 to develop research into related aspects of cultural and political history

To do this, It will re-examine punk in two distinct but overlapping ways: first, in terms of its ‘politics’; secondly, as a form of youth culture.

British punk’s emergence as a recognised cultural form and musical genre is often linked to the Sex Pistols. The band’s records, such as ‘Anarchy in the UK’ (1976) and ‘God Save the Queen’ (1977), provoked controversy and helped distinguish punk as an overtly politicised youth culture. Such perception was reinforced by the political signifiers displayed by punks (swastikas, Marx, anarchy symbols) and groups such as The Clash making direct reference to racial tensions, unemployment and their immediate socio-economic environment. Punk bands formed an integral part of Rock Against Racism (RAR), and even as it began to fragment into differing factions, so those informed by punk often retained a political (or critical) focus. If post-punk bands such as the Gang of Four tackled questions of consumption and gender relations, then the skinhead-orientated Oi! scene concentrated on issues of class identity and the ‘politics of the street’. By the early 1980s, the anarchist politics of bands such as Crass advocated an activist approach that rallied recruits to CND and helped initiate the ‘Stop the City’ campaigns that pre-empted the later anti-globalisation movement, while a punk-informed ‘white power’ music scene had developed on the far right of British politics. This narrative of changing and contrasting punk politics requires careful scrutiny and assessment. Our project traces the ‘politicisation’ of punk, both as it was expressed and imagined by the performers, but also by their managers, record companies, music journalists and academics. The role played by Birmingham University’s Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, we suggest, is an important, if overlooked topic. The CCCS may not simply have theorised and documented punk; it may have shaped it. To this end, our project will ask:

l What forms did punk’s politics take; what were its primary concerns?

l How and by whom was punk’s meaning constructed and interpreted politically?

l How was the challenge of punk understood and responded to by establishment forces – government, local councils, mainstream and music media, music industry?

l What was the relationship between punk and organised political groups?

Youth Culture:

Punk presented itself primarily as a youth culture. Its principal means of expression was through style, popular music and the music media; its main adherents were aged in their teens and early 20s; it drew from – and critiqued – previous forms of popular youth culture and the cultural industry of which it was part. To an extent, therefore, punk can be viewed as another in the line of youth ‘subcultures’ that stretched back at least to the 1950s. Yet punk emerged in a distinct socio-economic context. If post-war youth cultures had developed in tandem with economic growth, then punk flowered in a period of economic downturn. Consequently, punk may be seen less as a culture of aspiration and more as a culture of revolt. One of its defining characteristics was its explicit challenge to prevailing cultural and social mores. Of course, the extent to which those involved in punk engaged with or developed such a critical approach varied and is open to question. But punk’s impact extended beyond music to inform fashion, the visual arts and social spaces such as clubs, shops and squats. For many involved in punk, it provided a cultural form that invited creative innovation, facilitated room for social or political commentary, and offered the basis for an alternative lifestyle beyond the perceived mainstream. Our project will therefore ask:

l Was punk a cultural response to external socio-economic and political forces prevailing in Britain between 1976 and 1984, or a product of internal cultural and music industry forces?

l Did punk enable the construction or redefinition of class, gender and personal identities; did it inform aspirations and opportunities?

l Did punk offer young people a forum for dissent or expression denied them in other spheres; did it facilitate cultural networks and, if so, how did these work?

l What was the relationship between punk as a nationally-recognised youth culture and regional variations thereof?

7 responses to “Punk, Politics and Youth Culture, 1976-84”

whos the author?

I believe the author of the blog is Prof. Matt Worley. Thanks for drawing the lack of that information to our attention.

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" British punk emerged in 1976, coalescing around the Sex Pistols and spreading – virus-like – into the suburbs, provinces and cities of the UK. Almost from the outset, punk proved a contested cultural space."

A young Punk, Shane Hanley, sitting in the street with a girl listening to music on a boombox, 1980s by Marcus Graham

Punk’s moment (1976–77) threw up an array of bands, clubs, fanzines and record labels. The moral panic that followed the Sex Pistols’ ‘foul-mouthed’ appearance on teatime television in December 1976 ensured punk moved overground into the wider public consciousness. The furore surrounding the Sex Pistols’ ‘God Save the Queen’ (1977), released to coincide with the Jubilee and wrapped in a Jamie Reid sleeve that defaced Elizabeth II, added seditious intent to punk’s delinquency. Even then, beneath the tabloid scare stories, bands such as The Clash, X-Ray Spex and The Adverts proffered songs of socio-cultural critique, while Siouxsie and the Banshees, Wire, Subway Sect, The Slits and others hinted at something other . Across 1977–78 punk moved into the provinces, spawning local scenes and evolving towards post-punk sounds and sensibilities. Joy Division, from Manchester came to best define the shift from anger to alienation. But the late 1970s was also the period of Rock Against Racism and subcultural revivals; punk-inspired experimentalism and potent social realism. Parallel to punk, industrial culture emerged via Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire, while John Peel’s radio show offered late-night glimpses into ever-widening punk possibilities. At the decade’s end, 2-Tone and New Romanticism had evolved from punk’s diverse milieu, cultivating new styles in the process. Pop was reimagined into the 1980s; alternative charts were created to account for the burgeoning underground.

The 1980s saw punk splinter into various factions. Oi! emerged as the ‘beat of the street’, blunt punk rock informed by Sham 69 and keen to align with skinheads as a more resonant embodiment of punk’s claims to proletarian roots. Anarcho-punk tribes gathered around Crass and Poison Girls, pushing punk politics deeper into protest against war, vivisection, the City and everything else representing ‘the system’. The Exploited headed-up those keen to pronounce ‘punk’s not dead’, their singer Wattie Buchan perfecting the soon-to-be-clichéd Mohican. From the cracks in between a ‘positive punk’ emerged, drawing from the macabre sensuality of early Adam and the Ants and Siouxsie and the Banshees to pave the road to Goth. Spinning off at tangents, independent labels such as FAST, Factory, Postcard and 4AD cultivated their own aesthetics, while those holding fast to punk’s DIY ethos forged an ‘indie’ world of askew pop that often looked back to various sixties influences in an effort to avoid the descending clouds of the Thatcherite eighties.

Come the 2020s and punk still stains the cultural fabric. Nostalgia, that most un-punk of notions, hangs heavy over festivals and ‘back in the day’ bore-stories. Co-option has led to punk graphics selling credit cards and burgers (just as Jamie Reid predicted they would). But dig deep and there remains much to rediscover and much to utilise from punk’s cultural impact. There was a time when every village and town centre came replete with punks huddled in a bus shelter or on steps handy to sit on. Now, the works of punk-informed artists such as Linder or the always-changing-always-the-same approach of The Fall offer points of inspiration. DIY remains a spur to agency. Punk’s negation was always best-used as a source of creativity; a means to reassemble and recreate; to build from the ruins.

Matthew Worley grew up on the periphery of the punk culture, and found himself fascinated by it. He is a professor of Modern History at University of Reading, with an interest in twentieth-century British culture and politics. He co-founded the Reading-based Subcultures Network of academics researching in youth and subculture movements. He has published No Future: Politics, Punk and Society, 1976-84.

This essay was curated by The Subcultures Network , which was formed in 2011 to facilitate research on youth cultures and social change, and commissioned as part of the National Lottery Heritage Funded project to build the online Museum of Youth Culture. Being developed by YOUTH CLUB, the Museum of Youth Culture is a new destination dedicated to celebrating 100 years of youth culture history through photographs, ephemera and stories.

The National Lottery Heritage Fund invests money to help people across the UK explore, enjoy and protect the heritage they care about - from the archaeology under our feet to the historic parks and buildings we love, from precious memories and collections to rare wildlife.

Oh Bondage, Up Yours!, X-Ray Spex, 1978 Typical Girls , The Slits, 1979 Anarchy In The UK , Sex Pistols, 1976 White Riot , The Clash, 1977 Bored Teenagers , The Adverts, 1978

Jubilee, Derek Jarman, 1978 The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, Julien Temple, 1980

Punk and skinhead girls at a gig with peroxide hair, leather jackets and Fred Perry shirt, Hastings, 1981 by Clare Muller

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‘i wanna see some history’: recent writing on british punk, review products.

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 September 2016

Tucked away on the b-side of the Sex Pistols’ third single, ‘Pretty Vacant’ (1977), is a cover version of The Stooges’ ‘No Fun’. The song had long been a staple of the Pistols’ live set; on record, however, Johnny Rotten chose to open the track with a diatribe against those attempting to imbue the punk culture he helped instigate with broader socio-economic, cultural or political implications. ‘Here we go now’, he snarled, ‘a sociology lecture, with a bit of psychology, a bit of neurology, a bit of fuckology’.

The target of Rotten's ire was the tendency of journalists such as Caroline Coon to underpin punk's anger with reference to the desperate economic circumstances of the mid-1970s. It was only ‘natural’, Coon had suggested, that a group of ‘deprived London street kids’ such as the Sex Pistols would produce music ‘with a startlingly anti-establishment bias’. Footnote 2 But if Rotten was not so sure, then academics, journalists and political commenters have – perhaps predictably – tended to side with Coon. Almost from the moment British punk was ‘named’ in 1976, it was interpreted as a key moment in, or example of, the intersection of political resistance and popular culture. To read back over contemporary political journals, analytical press reviews and even tabloid exposés is to find ruminations on punk's cultural and political meaning or intent.

Given this, it is surprising to find that punk – and youth culture more generally – has been largely ignored by historians. There are many reasons for this. Some lie in the prejudices of the profession, others in the theoretical and empirical problems entailed in writing such histories. Punk made a lot of noise, but its historical traces lie scattered across the memories and personal archives of individual actors and fans. Moreover, the grander claims for punk's significance have typically found expression in the music press – a medium not known to lend itself to academic rigour. But whatever the explanation, punk's history remains buried in the depths of its cultural produce (records, fanzines, posters, artworks, films) and the minutiae of journalistic overviews, its meanings blurred across the moving terrain of continued sociological study. In this review article, we identify the ways in which punk's history has so far been presented and assess three recent contributions. We also suggest how in the future punk's history might be researched and written.

Taken broadly, reflective writing on punk has tended to comprise three forms: the first (auto)biographical, with personal testimony supplying historical authority, the second popular historical, wherein a narrative of cultural development is told (sometimes with reference to contemporaneous social, political and economic events) and the third socio-cultural, in which scholars from cultural studies, sociology and cognate disciplines have sought to frame punk's history within some overarching account of the interplay of culture and change.

The first of these, autobiography/biography, may be usefully tied to a tendency evident within punk's early stirrings. That is, those involved quickly moved to collate, construct and protect their own emergent histories. Thus, the Sex Pistols recruited a designer (Jamie Reid), photographer (Ray Stevenson, then Dennis Morris) and film-maker (Julien Temple) to document the band's progress, the culmination of which was the quasi-Situationist fantasy of The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle (1980), a filmic attempt by Malcolm McLaren, the Sex Pistols’ manager/Svengali, to claim the Pistols’ myth as his own. But if Swindle remains a potent example of why those who make history should not thereby be trusted to write it, then its initial starting point remains significant: to secure control of the group's presentation and to set it against and in contrast to the distorting lens of the media and the all-too-familiar contrivances of the music industry.

Crucially, too, punk's audience was also motivated to document the culture from the bottom-up. Fanzines such as Sniffin’ Glue were designed to provide an alternative to a weekly music press deemed ‘so far away from the kids that they can't possibly say anything of importance’. Footnote 3 Film-makers, including Temple, Don Letts and Wolfgang Büld, captured punk's grass-roots development in stark documentary form. Footnote 4 The first punk books were almost all photographic collections or compiled press-cuttings culled from newspapers and fanzines. Footnote 5 As a result, punk's historiography has been defined by a predominance of autobiography, oral testimony, ephemera collections and pictorial representation. Footnote 6

Such accounts remain informative and entertaining. Over time, as new angles are sought and punk's battlelines fade into the past, so they continue to throw up choice bits of detail to tickle the punk connoisseur and shed light on events lost in previous accounts. At the same time, the transition from contemporary cultural critique to artefact has arguably served to blunt the tensions, innovations and contradictions so resonant of punk. More generally, the relativism of memoir, biography and most oral testimony has precluded analytical consideration of punk's broader cultural significance. The complexities of punk culture are denied in favour of subjectivist accounts that too often fall back on apocryphal stories and the nostalgic hue that continues to surround 1976–77. It is rare to find, for example, consideration of how the complex interplay of personnel, venues, resources and sensibilities came together to ‘make’ punk, or how it gave form to, in Raymond Williams’ words, the ‘structures of feeling’ that the cultural moment embodied. Footnote 7

A recent and notable exception to this is the memoir of Viv Albertine: guitarist, key songwriter, strategist and sometime manager of the first all-female punk band The Slits. Footnote 8 Clothes. . . Music. . . Boys. . . (2012), despite its unwieldy title (the extent of the teenage Albertine's interests as summarised by her irate mother), is brilliantly written. Funny, moving, insightful and formally innovative, the book is also preoccupied to an often uncomfortable and somehow very ‘punk’ degree with honesty. This concern with ‘(genital) warts ‘n’ all’, as Albertine amusingly describes it, offers access to punk as a history from below, giving substance to its structures of feeling. One specific aspect of this is sexuality. In its matter-of-fact accounts of the author's relationships and carnal experiences, the book offers a fascinating window into the neglected topic of punk's sexual politics. Footnote 9

Punk's role as a formative youth culture, impacting powerfully upon identity, is richly served. Albertine brings to bear a carefully considered perspective on how punk affected her outlook on life, demonstrating its lasting effect and therefore contemporary relevance. A key instance of this is the fact that punk became the framework for Albertine's re-invention of herself in later life as her marriage began to break up: after years of no longer playing the guitar, she re-taught herself and began to write new songs, putting herself through a second baptism of fire by performing them at local open-mic nights.

The book's main focus, on Albertine's experience, reasserts the subjective nature of memory. ‘Let others who were there tell their versions if they want to. This is mine’, she asserts early on. Footnote 10 The text is unusual, however, in the extent to which it historicises this experience. Clothes. . . Music. . . Boys. . . reveals that, as was the case for many punks, Albertine's countercultural pre-history in 1960s protest, illicit trips to Amsterdam, art school and the mid-1970s pub rock scene was a significant influence on her punk years. Rather than sweeping statements equating her own perspective to that of punk in general, Albertine is both aware of differences within its ranks (class and education) and their consequences, noting, for example, the initial gap in life experience – in terms of age and background – between herself and Slits’ singer Ari Up. Albertine understands that there were different tendencies of punk, which she describes as proto-Thatcherite ‘nihilists and careerists’ on the one hand versus those with ‘ideas’ on the other. Footnote 11 This, of course, is an oversimplification, but her inclusion of ‘careerists’ avoids any pretence at defining the ‘real punk’. Not dissimilarly, the book also offers a nuanced perspective on The Slits and feminism, revealing a band whose understandings of gender and relationship to women's rights were more complicated and internally conflicted than has so far been acknowledged. Albertine, for example, recalls an instance in which she claims that the rest of The Slits disapproved of her choice of stage outfit, seeing it as contradicting her feminist politics, whereas for her it was an act of subversive reclamation.

Despite its many qualities, Albertine's book has clear limits as an historical source. As with most memoir and autobiography, the scenes presented in Clothes. . . Music. . . Boys. . . read as though they have been tidied up both narratively speaking and in terms of the meaning attached to them. This is not a criticism. Any written account that did not impose some kind of retrospective coherence on memory would be very disjointed. And it should be noted that Albertine's book reads convincingly in comparison with many other ‘punk memoirs’: the vagaries and alleged libels and plagiarisms of Dame Vivienne Westwood's recent account being a case in point. Footnote 12 Nevertheless, the ‘problem’ of subjectivity remains, even as Albertine recognises and avoids the trap of universalising her own personal experience.

Punk's tendency to prioritise the personalised narrative bleeds into most popular historical accounts of punk, not least John Robb's engaging but disparate Oral History of Punk (2001). Indeed, narrative accounts of punk have begun to multiply as individual memoirs, group biographies and popular music histories find publication. Footnote 13 Some of these are excellent. Jon Savage's England's Dreaming (1991) will forever remain the definitive study of the Sex Pistols’ rise and fall, locating the band firmly within the cultural, socio-economic and political context of the mid-1970s. Simon Reynolds, too, has catalogued punk's experimental diaspora in his Rip it Up and Start Again (2005), which journeys through the various ‘post-punk’ scenes that emerged in the Pistols’ wake. In so doing, Reynolds argues that ‘revolutionary movements in pop culture have their widest impact after the “moment” has allegedly passed, when ideas spread from the metropolitan bohemian elites and hipster cliques that originally “own” them, and reach the suburbs and the regions’. That such ideas were often ‘inextricably connected to the political and social turbulence of the times’ is made clear as Reynolds celebrates the musical innovations and intellectual engagement of artists who ‘exposed and dramatised the mechanisms of power in everyday life’ while simultaneously committing to an ethos of ‘perpetual change’. Footnote 14

More typically, narrative accounts of punk serve to absorb it into an ever-more uniform continuum of a popular music history that is close to saturation point. With a multitude of monthly music magazines ( Mojo , Q , Uncut , Vive Le Rock ) dedicated to rock's past and countless documentaries (see the recent BBC4 Punk Britannia , Don Letts’ Attitude (2005) and various DVD histories of The Clash, Joy Division, Sex Pistols and Sid Vicious) regurgitating well-worn legends ad infinitum , so punk's innovators and innovations become dislocated from – or only superficially related to – their historical context. In effect, the commodification that occurred in response to punk's original challenge is reinforced as pop heritage, with punk ‘hits’ incorporated into ‘best of’ lists and reissues and choice cuts incorporated into state-sanctioned cultural showcases (the Olympic ceremony, gallery exhibitions of punk sleeve designs, etc.). In other words, the honed narrative breeds familiarity, smooths the edges, excludes the uncomfortable and reduces punk to but another touchstone in pop's rich tapestry, a distinct musical segue between the 1970s and 1980s.

Alternative readings do exist. Greil Marcus, Stewart Home and Tom Vague have – to different degrees – argued for punk's place in a ‘secret history’ of dissent that passes back through Situationist interventions, Lettrisme and Dada to even the ‘King Mob’ outrages of the 1780 Gordon Riots. Footnote 15 Polemical essays have also sought to contest or undermine perceived wisdom as to punk's motives, meaning and import. Footnote 16 But even these rely on a choice interpretation of punk that selects what is deemed relevant to the argument and discards what is not. And if the anarcho-punk movement inspired by Crass and the DIY ethos embodied in the independent labels that flowered around punk have recently begun to be accorded greater interest, then other areas of punk's dissemination have yet to be judged worthy of serious comment. Footnote 17 Punk's early 1980s resurgence, for example, not to mention the provincial scenes or those around Oi! and positive punk remain beyond the pervasive narrative of popular music's ‘progression’. Footnote 18 Too often, it seems, punk's broader culture – its audience, context, language and politics – is lost beneath the minutiae of who played bass for whom and inventories of gig dates or record releases.

Yet the existence of alternative narratives, and the potential for further exploration, suggests the historian has important work to do. They allow opportunity to make better sense of punk's origins, complexities, contradictions and contested forms. They enable a challenge to the popular historical accounts that may well represent the obsessions and imaginings of their authors, but lose sight of the evidence and the wider context. More crucially, they hint toward a need to identify the empirical basis upon which any theoretical framework may help link processes and forms of cultural practice and production to social and political change.

Punk's meaning and wider significance once formed the crux of much contemporary analysis of British youth culture, not only in the music press but also in political periodicals and sections of the academy. Indeed, there is a neat if not altogether coincidental link to be made between the emergence of the Sex Pistols and the flourishing of the Birmingham University Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS). Under Stuart Hall's leadership the CCCS developed a theoretical framework that explained youth culture as a form of ‘resistance’. The CCCS provided a focus for those – particularly, but not exclusively, within the social sciences and the nascent discipline of cultural studies – who saw popular culture as irreducibly political. Footnote 19 Punk was an obvious object of attention, whether as a semiotic assault on conventional codes of meaning (Hebdige), a paradoxical challenge to the music industry (Laing) or the apotheosis of an art school tradition that sought to marry ‘bohemian ideals of authenticity’ with ‘Pop Art ideals of artifice’ at the interface between modernism and postmodernism (Frith). Footnote 20 In their wake, many of the assumptions first made about punk – its working-class origins, political affinity and subversive intent – have been held up to scrutiny and found wanting. Footnote 21

More recently, it is punk's legacies that have drawn attention. Footnote 22 Politically, both Rock Against Racism (1976–81) and, less systematically, the ‘white noise’ movement aligned to the far right have provided a means to assess punk's cultural politics in a period of acute social tension. Footnote 23 Equally crucially, the primary role played by women in punk scenes locally and nationally continues to warrant attention. Footnote 24 These approaches to punk have been less interested in it as historical narrative – either as artefact or conduit of social change – but rather in terms of how it operated as a scene or social form. Arguably, however, such return visits have neglected the socio-economic or class-context of punk's formation and development, an oversight that is addressed in one of the more recent studies considered here. Footnote 25

Pete Dale's Anyone Can Do It (2012) focuses on the tensions between a Marxist and anarchist reading of punk as a way of exploring the music's continuing reinvention and claims to empowerment. Footnote 26 Dale's study occupies a very different genre to Albertine's Clothes. . . Music. . . Boys. . . and therefore has different objectives. It is comparable, however, in the way that it balances personal investment in punk Footnote 27 with real insight into it as a broader phenomenon. The former gives weight to Dale's arguments and allows for structural innovation that livens up the usual academic monograph format. In between theoretical excurses and in-depth analyses, there are ‘interludes’ consisting of reflections from the author's past with the intention of shedding experiential light on the surrounding sections. Like Albertine's arrangement of her book as if it were a vinyl record, with a ‘Side One’ and a ‘Side Two’, there is something pleasingly punk about such disregard for convention.

In terms of history, Anyone Can Do It treats punk as an established tradition with an afterlife extending to very recent times. As such, it offers a positive contrast to the kind of partisan defences and selective argumentation highlighted earlier. In particular, the book's treatment of two subcultures and forms of musical production from the 1990s (Riot Grrrl and Math Rock) as punk is refreshing in the face of the persistent tendency in personal testimonies to pull rank by insisting that the movement was over, its purity compromised, within the first year/six months/whenever the author ceased to be involved, etc.

In contrast to personal testimony and popular historical narratives, Dale's study is theoretically informed and methodologically rigorous, mediating between close readings of songs and historical, social, political and philosophical themes. While many academic studies of popular music and subculture tend to fall on one or the other side of this divide, Dale offers an interdisciplinary approach to punk that brings together history, politics and cultural studies to attempt what Raymond Williams might have called a ‘fully elaborated account of cultural process’. Footnote 28 The book is commendably ambitious in its thematic range; alongside its explorations of socialism, anarchism and post-structuralist speculations, the issue of tension between tradition and innovation in punk becomes a jumping-off point for a comparison of punk rock with folk music.

Like many previous academic accounts of punk, the key difficulty with Anyone Can Do It is its theoreticism. The danger of emphasising the theoretical is that it by turn neglects punk's material history, the complexity of its politics and the experiences of its protagonists. Dale sometimes runs this risk with his reliance on those strands of cultural theory and continental philosophy – for example the work of Jacques Derrida – that privilege post-structuralist understandings of language over a solid and specific historical grounding. Because of this abstraction, the book discusses punk alongside historical and political issues to which it is indisputably connected (the tensions between anarchism and socialism), but it does so at a level some way from the experience of those involved in punk's making and development. For instance, instead of an exploration of the differences between, say, the university Marxism of early Scritti Politti, the disaffected working-class labourism of many Oi! bands and the anarcho-separatism of Crass, there is a theoretical comparison of punk to Maoist cadres in China. Footnote 29 On the question of punk's politics, there is minimal reference to archival research that would support the claim that, with the odd exception, punk was generally a leftist cultural movement. Footnote 30

Equally, Dale's approach runs the risk of counteracting the book's strengths – its interdisciplinarity, its personal investment – by resembling a long-running tendency in cultural studies to use cultural production as an anchor for theoretical debates that are only loosely related to it. Thus, the ‘complex historicity’ of culture is reduced to ‘the status of mere evidence’ for particular theoretical positions. Footnote 31 Even so, Dale's study does engage fruitfully with the political tensions generated by punk's traditionalist and avant-garde tendencies, a theme often alluded to in the best popular historical narratives. Savage, for instance, characterises the split as one between ‘social realists’ and ‘arties’, while Reynolds implicitly builds on this distinction to portray ‘post-punk’ as belonging firmly to the latter camp.

To date, such ‘division’ has rarely been dealt with satisfactorily, tending towards over-simplified polarities of class and education attributed to these apparently neatly separable tendencies. Footnote 32 The problem in Anyone Can Do It is different. Again, it can be attributed to its theoreticism. The categories of ‘tradition’ and ‘innovation’ are presented as having assumed meanings that are then conflated with other complex historical phenomena. So, for Dale, tradition equals Marxism/socialism equals macro, whereas novelty equals anarchism equals micro. This, in turn, leads to an empirically questionable description of US pop-punk band Green Day as having a ‘Marxist flavour’ but ignores a band such as Gang of Four, who took Marxist theory and aimed for the charts by incorporating the rhythms, timbres and studio experiments of funk, disco, dub reggae and the avant-garde into the punk template of stripped-down rock. Nor is this simply a matter of theory muddying the historical waters. Dale's perspective allows him to ask whether novelty and innovation within punk is truly empowering or if fidelity to tradition would have been more so. Footnote 33 Better, perhaps, would be to have asked the question in historical terms: ‘how far was punk's musical development bound up in the fragmentation that followed its initial coalescence?’; ‘how far did form and practice advance some of punk's most challenging concerns and represent particular social groups within it?’ Certainly, there are theoretical resources that can help us answer this, for example Raymond Williams’ notion of ‘the emergent’. The term refers to the complex and variable ways in which new cultural forms are entwined with social, economic and political change. Changes in cultural forms that differ from dominant modes, like punk, are always related to the coalescence of new social groupings. Footnote 34

It is the question of how these social groupings formed that underpins Nick Crossley's Networks of Sound, Style and Subversion (2015). Footnote 35 This is the most recent contribution to punk scholarship and in many ways one of the most sophisticated, both in terms of empirical research and data analysis. Crossley's main argument is that to understand how and why punk took off historically, it is necessary to trace the social networks of people in particular locations. If punk is to be understood as a ‘scene’, then Crossley's question is ‘how did this scene form’? This is pursued through case studies of punk and post-punk in London, Manchester, Sheffield and Liverpool. Theoretically, the work draws on relational sociology, an approach that sees interaction as the key element of social life and uses the Ucinet software program to collate quantitative data into enlightening diagrams of ‘who knew whom’ at given moments in time. Lest punk romantics bridle at the thought of such a potentially dry, overly scientific approach to the topic, it should be noted that Crossley stresses the personal impact of punk upon his life, its thrill and mystery, as well as the key importance of the ‘excitement’ and pleasure’ of punk to the growth of its networks. Footnote 36

Overall, Networks of Sound is extremely useful in its careful mapping of who knew whom, how, and what that resulted in. It goes beyond rhetoric or scattered evidence to move past the mythology of a punk ‘year zero’, calmly and clearly explaining how specific scenes coalesced and developed. The detailed chronological narrative of the growing network of London punk in chapter six is especially useful. Having this information laid out so methodically will no doubt aid future scholars of punk in tracing further historical documentation of these relationships. Notably, too, Crossley also questions foundational approaches of Dick Hebdige and others that posit punk as a site of political resistance without the support of empirical evidence. Footnote 37

The prioritisation of network theory does have its limits, especially with regard to Crossley's depiction of punk's historical and socio-economic setting. By concentrating on the minutiae of networks, the effect of the broader historical context on them tends to be neglected or even dismissed. So, for example, Crossley refers to the economic and political crises of the 1970s Britain as a concern of punk but simultaneously rejects its offering explanation for punk's formation. The evidence for this thesis is that punks did not share the same outlook on the crisis and indeed sometimes professed not to care about it. Footnote 38 But does not such a view perhaps overstate individual consciousness and agency, whilst also underplaying the larger social and historical currents that may inform or direct our feelings and actions whether we are aware of them or not? Archival research might suggest that, in fact, these larger currents did impact upon punk's history. Key actors like Malcolm McLaren and Bernie Rhodes, manager of the Clash, always insisted on a social and political dimension to punk, not to mention the timeliness of its revolt. Once it began to be portrayed as an angry response to crisis-ridden Britain by music journalists such as Caroline Coon, affinity with punk tended to be on the basis of some form of discontent, which, as it was experienced in the context of the late 1970s, cannot be disentangled from that moment. Even the Bromley Contingent, the select coterie of scenesters who provided the Sex Pistols with their early audience and were among the least politically engaged of the early punks, viewed the movement as an outlet for existential dissatisfaction and a home for the marginalised. Jordan, the striking shop assistant at Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren's SEX boutique, once told Julie Burchill that politics were ‘boring’, though in the same interview stressed her outsider credentials as expressed in her outfits. Footnote 39 Indeed, the many public debates that erupted during the era over what counted as punk usually focused on the substance of its rebellious engagement with the wider world. For Crossley, what led punks to network initially was music. This may well be the case, but such cultural production is always shaped by its historical context.

Crossley's scepticism about punk's link to wider social change is matched by his wariness about the importance of politics to punk, in effect a counterview to Dale's insistence that punk be treated as an inherently leftist political phenomenon. By so doing, Crossley may well underestimate punk's political ties. The uniformly retrospective denials of political content or motivations by various punk protagonists quoted in Networks of Sound highlight the problems of relying solely on personal testimony. Footnote 40 Historical research, on the other hand, reveals certain recognisable patterns. One is the connection to the libertarian radicalism of the 1960s and early 1970s shared in varying degrees by many central figures like Westwood, McLaren, Jamie Reid, Richard Boon (manager of Buzzcocks), Geoff Travis (founder of Rough Trade) and Tony Wilson (founder of Factory Records). The other is the sense of oppositionism – however ill-defined – that ran through punk's rhetoric, imagery and practice.

As this suggests, Crossley plays down questions of class and social division in the historical formation of punk. There is a swift muting of class, gender, sexual and racial inequalities as motivating factors on the assumption that this line of argument construes punk as a political rather than a cultural movement. Footnote 41 This is not necessarily the case. Culture, imbricated as it is in social life, cannot avoid both reflecting and reflecting upon such divisions whether explicitly or implicitly. For instance, despite their aforementioned absence of consciously political motivation, the Bromley Contingent contributed very early on to punk's development into a subcultural space in which sexual and gender dissidence could often be more confidently expressed.

The importance attached to punk as a musical form and cultural style continues to fascinate sociologists and cultural commentators. Equally, scholarly interest in punk extends way beyond the United Kingdom. Footnote 42 It remains true, however, that the study of punk and wider youth culture has been neglected by historians. Footnote 43 That is not to say punk's ‘history’ has been neglected. Rather, the subjectivist, narrative or overly-theorised approaches typically adopted provide opportunity for historical analysis to provide a complementary approach.

One of the assumptions of the CCCS was that youth cultures may be read as sites of resistance to prevailing socio-economic structures, class relations and cultural hegemony. Footnote 44 This, in turn, has informed wider understanding of punk, be it either to affirm punk's cultural import as protest or challenge, or to deny it harboured any such socio-economic or political implications. Regardless, such debate has tended to rely on theoretical conjecture, assertion and memoir. For any claim as to punk's meaning or intent, it is vital to explore the ways in which punk's cultural practices were formed, understood and developed. This means locating punk within its (shifting) cultural, socio-economic and political context. It also means examining what people said and did as they engaged in the cultural forms associated with or developed from punk's emergence in the mid-1970s. To suggest that youth cultures do or do not constitute formative socio-cultural and political spaces through which young people develop, experiment with and acquire understanding of their world necessitates empirical research to provide evidence for either claim.

Such an approach has political connotations. Punk's basic message was ‘do it yourself’, which in the context of the mid-1970s meant assaulting or circumscribing those cultural, social and political forces that appeared to have suffocated the possibilities promised by the mechanisms of consumption. As the first modern youth culture born into recession, the punk generation entered the world and reported back in conflicting and sometimes ugly ways. Punk's impact was such, moreover, that it continued to inform aspects of youth (and popular) culture long into the 1980s, during which time the deteriorating socio-economic and geo-political climate provided ample material to feed punk's urge for autonomy. To research punk's politics means, therefore, to trace not only its varied political associations and connotations, but to specify the particular cultural, social and political spheres in which their impact has had a greater or lesser effect.

What this involves in practice is the combination of empirical and archival research with a theoretical method that allows for the complexities, contradictions and contentious nature of punk's cultural practice to be embraced. To reduce punk to a moment, a sound or a definite political perspective is to simplify the divergent cultural strands that emerged and developed through the cultural spaces opened up in 1976–77. As may be evident, we favour the cultural materialism originating from the later work of Raymond Williams. This places the stress not simply on contextualising cultural production, but understanding forms like punk as being both historically and socially rooted. Footnote 45 The importance accorded by cultural materialism to cultural, social and political institutions in the making and reception of culture likewise bears on an understanding of the spheres in which punk did and did not make a lasting impact. Footnote 46

As to the subcultural perspective on punk: it may be useful to see subcultures as collaborative ‘ways of coping’ that maintain ‘collective identity and individual self-esteem’ for those ‘ill at ease in the dominant culture’. Footnote 47 Punk is thereby conceived as a formative space that has shaped the engagement of many with the world. Implicit within such ‘lived narratives’ are ‘structures of feeling’. This concept is key to explaining the historical and social resonance of what is usually mystified as intuitive, subjective and felt. Footnote 48 It is, we suggest, crucial to writing the history of punk as a ‘history from below’, while acknowledging the processes and forces working from above.

1 Sex Pistols, ‘No Fun’, in Pretty Vacant (Virgin VS 184, 1977), b-side.

2 Caroline Coon, ‘Sex Pistols: Rotten to the Core’, Melody Maker , 27 Nov. 1976, 34–5.

3 Perry , Mark , ‘ Editorial ’, Sniffin’ Glue , 1 ( 1976 ), 2 Google Scholar . For an overview of punk fanzines, see Worley , Matthew , ‘ Punk, Politics and British (fan)zines, 1976–84: “While the world was dying, did you wonder why?” ’, History Workshop Journal , 79 ( 2015 ), 76 – 106 CrossRef Google Scholar .

4 Sex Pistols No. 1 , Julien Temple, dir. (1977), film; Punk in London , Wolfgang Büld, dir. (1977), film; The Punk Rock Movie , Don Letts, dir. (1978), film.

5 Anscombe , Isabelle and Blair , Dike , Punk: Rock/Style/Stance/People/Start That Head the New Wave in England and America ( New York : Urizen Books , 1978 ) Google Scholar ; Boston , Virginia , Punk Rock ( London : Plexus , 1978 ) Google Scholar ; Davis , Julie , ed., Punk ( London : Millington , 1977 ) Google Scholar ; Hennessey , Val , In the Gutter ( London : Quartet , 1978 ) Google Scholar ; Stevenson , Ray , Sex Pistols Scrap Book ( London : Self-published , 1977 [reissued as Sex Pistols File , London: Omnibus Press, 1978]) Google Scholar ; Tobler , John , Punk Rock ( London : Phebus , 1977 ) Google Scholar ; Dempsey , Michael , 100 Nights at The Roxy , ( London : Big O , 1978 ) Google Scholar .

6 For just one example of the countless photo books, see Morris , Dennis , Rebel Rock: A Photographic History of the Sex Pistols ( London : Omnibus Press , 1985 ) Google Scholar . For oral histories see McNeil , Legs and McCain , Gillian , Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk ( London : Abacus , 1997 ) Google Scholar ; Stevenson , Nils and Stevenson , Ray , Vacant: A Diary of the Punk Years, 1976–79 ( London : Thames & Hudson , 1999 ) Google Scholar ; Colegrave , Stephen and Sullivan , Chris , Punk: A Life Apart ( London : Cassell & Co. , 2001 ) Google Scholar ; Robb , John , Punk Rock: An Oral History ( London : Ebury Press , 2006 ) Google Scholar ; Nolan , David , I Swear I Was There: The Gig That Changed the World ( Church Stretton : IMP , 2006 ) Google Scholar ; Marko , Paul , The Roxy London WC2: A Punk Rock History ( London : Punk77 Books , 2007 ) Google Scholar ; Reynolds , Simon , Totally Wired: Post-Punk Interviews and Overviews ( London : Faber & Faber , 2009 ) Google Scholar ; Savage , Jon , The England's Dreaming Tapes ( London : Faber & Faber , 2009 ) Google Scholar ; Bull , Gregory and Dines , Mike , eds., Tales from the Punkside ( Northampton : Itchy Monkey Press , 2014 ) Google Scholar . For collections of photos or punk ephemera, see Easton , Simon , Sex and Seditionaries ( London : PunkPistol , 2007 ) Google Scholar ; Barker , Simon , Punk's Dead ( London : Divus , 2011 ) Google Scholar PubMed ; Kugelberg , Johan and Savage , Jon , eds., Punk: An Aesthetic ( New York : Rizzoli , 2012 ) Google Scholar ; Bestley , Russ and Ogg , Alex , The Art of Punk ( London : Omnibus Press , 2012 ) Google Scholar ; Savage , Jon , Punk 45: Original Punk Rock Singles Cover Art ( London : Soul Jazz , 2013 ) Google Scholar . There are now several autobiographies, including Lydon , John , Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored ( London : Pimlico , 2014 ) Google Scholar ; Lydon , John , Zimmerman , Keith and Zimmerman , Kent , Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs ( London : Plexus , 1994 ) Google Scholar ; Matlock , Glen , I Was a Teenage Sex Pistol , 2006 edn ( London : Reynolds & Hearn , 2006 [1990]) Google Scholar ; Wobble , Jah , Memoirs of a Geezer ( London : Serpent's Tail , 2009 ) Google Scholar ; Turner , Jeff with Bushell , Garry , Cockney Reject ( London : John Blake , 2010 ) Google Scholar ; Ignorant , Steve and Pottinger , Steve , The Rest is Propaganda ( London : Southern , 2010 ) Google Scholar ; Rimbaud , Penny , Shibboleth: My Revolting Life ( Edinburgh : AK Press , 1998 ) Google Scholar ; Ant , Adam , Stand and Deliver: The Autobiography ( London : Sidgewick & Jackson , 2006 ) Google Scholar ; Cope , Julian , Head On: Memories of the Liverpool Punk Scene and the Story of The Teardrop Explodes, 1976–82 ( London : Thorsons , 1999 edition) Google Scholar ; Westwood , Vivienne and Kelly , Ian , Vivienne Westwood ( London : Picador , 2014 ) Google Scholar .

7 Williams , Raymond , Marxism and Literature ( Oxford : Oxford University Press , 1977 ) Google Scholar .

8 Albertine , Viv , Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys ( London : Faber & Faber , 2014 ) Google Scholar .

9 To date, academic analyses of this theme have largely framed it in theoretical terms, offering little in the way of historical reference. See, however, Wilkinson , David , ‘ Ever Fallen In Love With Someone You Shouldn't Have?: Punk, Politics and Same-Sex Passion ’, Keywords , 13 ( 2015 ), 57 – 76 Google Scholar .

10 Albertine, Clothes , ix.

11 Ibid . 241.

12 Adam Sherwin, ‘Vivienne Westwood Accused of Plagiarism Over Book on Her Life’, The Independent , 16 Oct. 2014, available online at http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/vivienne-westwood-accused-of-plagiarism-over-book-on-her-life-9799821.html (last visited 19 Jan. 2015).

13 General histories would include Savage , Jon , England's Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock ( London : Faber & Faber , 1991 ) Google Scholar ; Reynolds , Simon , Rip it Up and Start Again: Post-Punk, 1978–84 ( London : Faber & Faber , 2005 ) Google Scholar ; Heylin , Clinton , Babylon's Burning: From Punk to Grunge ( London : Penguin , 2007 ) Google Scholar ; Strongman , Phil , Pretty Vacant: A History of Punk ( London : Orion Books , 2007 ) Google Scholar . Key band histories include Gilbert , Pat , Passion is a Fashion: The Real Story of The Clash ( London : Auram Press , 2009 edition) Google Scholar ; Grey , Marcus , The Clash: Return of the Last Gang in Town ( London : Helter Skelter , 2001 ) Google Scholar ; Ford , Simon , Hip Priest: The Story of Mark E Smith and The Fall ( London : Quartet Books , 2003 ) Google Scholar ; Middles , Mick and Smith , Mark E. , The Fall ( London : Omnibus Press , 2008 edition) Google Scholar ; Kirk , Roland , Kicking Up a Racket: The Story of Stiff Little Fingers, 1977–1983 ( Belfast : Appletree Press , 2009 ) Google Scholar ; Buckley , David , No Mercy: The Authorised and Uncensored Biography ( London : Hodder & Stoughton , 1997 ) Google Scholar ; Ford , Simon , Wreckers of Civilization: The Story of COUM Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle ( London : Black Dog , 1999 ) Google Scholar . Among the various biographies, Salewicz , Chris , Redemption Song: The Definitive Biography of Joe Strummer ( London : Harper Collins , 2006 ) Google Scholar ; Middles , Mick and Reade , Lindsey , Torn Apart: The Life of Ian Curtis ( London : Omnibus Press , 2006 ) Google Scholar .

14 Reynolds, Rip it Up and Start Again , xvii–xxxi.

15 Marcus , Greil , Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century ( London : Faber & Faber , 1989 ) Google Scholar ; Home , Stewart , The Assault on Culture: Utopian Currents from Lettrisme to Class War ( Stirling : AK Press , 1991 ) Google Scholar ; Vague , Tom , King Mob Echo: From Gordon Riots to Situationists and Sex Pistols ( London : Dark Star , 2000 ) Google Scholar . See also Vague's Vague fanzine, a selection of which is complied in Vague , Tom , The Great British Mistake: Vague, 1977–92 , ( Edinburgh : AK Press , 1994 ) Google Scholar .

16 Burchill , Julie and Parsons , Tony , The Boy Looked at Johnny: The Obituary of Rock and Roll ( London : Pluto Press , 1978 ) Google Scholar ; Wise , David and Wise , Stuart , ‘ The End of Music ’, in Home , Stewart , ed., What is Situationism? A Reader ( Edinburgh : AK Press , 1996 ) Google Scholar . Originally entitled ‘Punk, Reggae; A Critique’, this last was first published as a pamphlet in 1978 and circulated among anarchist groups in Leeds. See also Johnson , Garry , The Story of Oi!: A View from the Dead End of the Street ( Manchester : Babylon Books , 1982 ) Google Scholar ; Home , Stewart , Cranked Up Really High: Genre Theory and Punk Rock ( Hove : Codex , 1995 ) Google Scholar .

17 For Crass and anarcho-punk, see Berger , George , The Story of Crass ( London : Omnibus Press , 2006 ) Google Scholar ; Cogan , Brian , ‘ “Do They Owe Us a Living? Of Course They Do!” Crass, Throbbing Gristle, and Anarchy and Radicalism in early English Punk Rock ’, Journal for the Study of Radicalism , 1 , 2 ( 2007 ), 77 – 90 CrossRef Google Scholar ; Cross , Richard , ‘The Hippies Now Wear Black: Crass and the Anarcho-Punk Movement, 1977–84’ , Socialist History , 26 ( 2004 ), 25 – 44 Google Scholar ; Glasper , Ian , The Day the Country Died: A History of Anarcho Punk, 1980–1984 ( London : Cherry Red , 2006 ) Google Scholar ; McKay , George , Senseless Acts of Beauty: Currents of Resistance since the Sixties ( London : Verso , 1996 ) Google Scholar . For independent labels and DIY, see Hesmondhalgh , David , ‘Post-Punk's Attempt to Democratise the Music Industry: the Success and Failure of Rough Trade’ , Popular Music , 16 , 3 ( 1998 ), 25 – 74 Google Scholar ; Young , Rob , Rough Trade ( London : Black Dog , 2006 ) Google Scholar ; Ogg , Alex , Independence Days: The Story of UK Independent Record Labels ( London : Cherry Red , 2009 ) Google Scholar ; Taylor , Neil , Document and Eyewitness: An Intimate History of Rough Trade ( London : Orion Books , 2010 ) Google Scholar ; Nice , James , Shadowplayers: The Rise and Fall of Factory Records ( London : Auram , 2010 ) Google Scholar ; King , Richard , How Soon is Now: The Madmen and Mavericks Who Made Independent Music, 1975–2005 ( London : Faber & Faber , 2012 ) Google Scholar .

18 A few exceptions would include Eddington , Richard , Sent from Coventry: The Chequered Past of Two Tone ( London : IMP , 2004 ) Google Scholar ; Thompson , Dave , Wheels Out of Gear: 2 Tone, The Specials and a World on Fire ( London : Helter Skelter , 2004 ) Google Scholar . See also Ian Glasper's work (cited previously) and Robb , John , Death to Trad Rock ( London : Cherry Red , 2009 ) Google Scholar , all of which serve as dictionaries of bands and labels relating to punk scenes not typically covered in mainstream histories of British music.

19 Most, too, look at punk as part of a broader overview of youth culture or popular music. See, for example, Brake , Mike , The Sociology of Youth Culture and Youth Subculture ( London : Routledge & Kegan Paul , 1980 ) Google Scholar ; Cashmore , Ellis , No Future: Youth and Society ( London : Heinemann , 1984 ) Google Scholar ; Chambers , Iain , Urban Rhythms: Pop Music and Popular Culture ( New York : St Martin's Press , 1985 ) CrossRef Google Scholar ; Frith , Simon , Sound Affects: Youth, Leisure and the Politics of Rock ‘n’ Roll ( New York : Pantheon , 1981 ) Google Scholar . For the ‘politics of pop’, see Street , John , Rebel Rock: The Politics of Popular Music ( Oxford : Blackwell , 1986 ) Google Scholar ; idem , Music and Politics (Cambridge: Polity, 2012). The best historical account of British youth culture remains Osgerby , Bill , Youth in Britain since 1945 ( Oxford : Blackwell , 1998 ) Google Scholar .

20 Hebdige , Dick , Subculture: The Meaning of Style , 2007 edn ( London : Routledge , 2007 [London: Methuen, 1979 ]) Google Scholar ; Laing , Dave , One Chord Wonders: Power and Meaning in Punk Rock ( Milton Keynes : Open University Press , 1985 ) Google Scholar ; Frith , Simon and Horne , Howard , Art into Pop ( London : Methuen & Co ., 1987 ) Google Scholar . See also, Henry , Tricia , Break All Rules: Punk Rock and the Making of a Style ( Ann Arbour : University of Michigan Press , 1989 ) Google Scholar ; Nehring , Neil , Flowers in the Dustbin: Culture, Anarchy and Postwar England ( Ann Arbour : University of Michigan Press , 1993 ) CrossRef Google Scholar ; Tillman , R. H. , ‘Punk Rock and the Construction of “Pseudo-Political” Movements’ , Popular Music and Society , 7 , 3 ( 1980 ) CrossRef Google Scholar , 165–75. For a more recent discussion of punk and postmodernism, see Moore , Ryan R. , ‘Postmodernism and Punk Subculture: Cultures of Authenticity and Deconstruction’ , The Communication Review , 7 ( 2004 ), 305 –27 CrossRef Google Scholar .

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22 For a collection of essays looking specifically at punk's cultural legacy, see Sabin , Roger , ed., Punk Rock: So What? The Cultural Legacy of Punk ( London : Routledge , 1999 ) Google Scholar .

23 Goodyer , Ian , Crisis Music: The Cultural Politics of Rock Against Racism ( Manchester : Manchester University Press , 2009 ) Google Scholar ; Renton , Dave , When We Touched the Sky: The Anti-Nazi League, 1977–81 ( Cheltenham : New Clarion Press , 2006 ) Google Scholar ; Widgery , David , Beating Time: Riot ‘n’ Race ‘n’ Rock ‘n’ Roll ( London : Chatto & Windus , 1986 ) Google Scholar ; Shaffer , Ryan , ‘The Soundtrack of Neo-Fascism: Youth and Music in the National Front’ , Patterns of Prejudice , 47 , 4–5 ( 2013 ), 458 –82 CrossRef Google Scholar ; Brown , Timothy S. , ‘Subcultures, Pop Music and Politics: Skinheads and “Nazi Rock” in England and Germany’ , Journal of Social History , 38 , 1 ( 2004 ), 157 –78 CrossRef Google Scholar ; Cotter , John , ‘Sounds of Hate: White Power Rock and Roll and the Neo-Nazi Skinhead Subculture’ , Terrorism and Political Violence , 11 , 2 ( 1999 ), 111 –40 CrossRef Google Scholar ; Lowles , Nick , White Riot: The Violent Story of Combat 18 ( London : Milo , 2001 ) Google Scholar . See also, for a compendium of texts on punk and race, Duncombe , Stephen and Tremblay , Maxwell , eds., White Riot: Punk Rock and the Politics of Race ( London : Verso , 2011 ) Google Scholar . For a rather different take on the question of identity, see Adams , Ruth , ‘ The Englishness of English Punk: Sex Pistols, Subcultures, and Nostalgia ’, Popular Music and Society , 31 , 4 ( 2008 ), 468 –88 CrossRef Google Scholar .

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25 For a rare article on punk and class, see Simonelli , David , ‘ Anarchy, Pop and Violence: Punk Rock Subculture and the Rhetoric of Class, 1976–78 ’, Contemporary British History , 16 , 2 ( 2002 ), 121 –44 CrossRef Google Scholar .

26 Dale , Pete , Anyone Can Do It: Empowerment, Tradition and the Punk Underground ( London : Routledge , 2012 ) Google Scholar .

27 In the 1990s, Dale co-ran post-punk and riot-grrrl indie label Slampt and participated in various associated bands including Milky Wimpshake.

28 Milner , Andrew , Re-Imagining Cultural Studies: The Promise of Cultural Materialism ( London : SAGE , 2002 ), 130 Google Scholar .

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31 Higgins , John , Raymond Williams: Literature, Marxism and Cultural Materialism ( London : Routledge , 1999 ), 162 –5 Google Scholar .

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36 Crossley, Networks of Sound , 1–2 and 44.

37 Ibid . 57.

38 Ibid . 60.

39 Julie Burchill, ‘Jordan: The Kid Who Wouldn't Wear Clarks Sandals’, NME , 15 Apr. 1978, 7–8.

40 Crossley, Networks of Sound , 52.

41 Crossley, Networks of Sound , 54–8.

42 See, for a UK example of a recent sociological study, Muggleton , David , Inside Subculture: The Postmodern Meaning of Style ( Oxford : Berg , 2000 ) Google Scholar . Just a few examples of European studies would include Schreiber , H. , Network of Friends: Hardcore-Punk der 80er Jahre in Europa ( Duisburg : Salon Alter Hammer , 2011 ) Google Scholar ; from Czechoslovakia, F. Fuchs, Kytary a řev aneb co bylo za zdí: Punk rock a hardcore v Československu před rokem 1989 (Brno: self-published, 2002); from France, Sang , P. Herr , Vivre pas survivre ( Paris : Editions du Yunnan , 2007 ) Google Scholar ; from Germany, Dreck auf Papier , I. G. , ed., Keine Zukunft war gestern. Punk in Deutschland ( Berlin : Archiv der Jugendkulturen , 2008 ) Google Scholar ; Schneider , F. A. : Als die Welt noch unterging. Von Punk zu NDW , 2nd edn ( Mainz : Ventil-Verlag , 2008 ) Google Scholar ; Skai , H. , Punk: Versuch der künstlerischen Realisierung einer neuen Lebenshaltung . ( Berlin : Archiv der Jugendkulturen , 2008 ) Google Scholar ; Boehlke , M. and Gericke , H. , eds., Too Much Future: Punk in der DDR ( Berlin : Verbrecher Verlag , 2007 ) Google Scholar ; from the Netherlands, Goossens , J. and Vedder , J. , Gejuich Was Massaal: geschiedenis van punk in Nederland 1976–82 ( Amsterdam : Jan Mets , 1996 ) Google Scholar ; from Serbia and former Yugoslavia, Pavlov , Dragan and Šunjka , Dejan , Punk u Jugoslaviji ( Yugoslavia : IGP Dedalus , 1991 ) Google Scholar ; Savic , S. and Todorovic , I. , Novosadska Punk Verzija 1978–2005 ( Novi Sad : Studentski Kulturni Centar , 2006 ) Google Scholar ; from Sweden, Jandreus , P. , The Encyclopedia of Swedish Punk 1977–1987 ( Stockholm : Premium Publishing , 2008 ) Google Scholar ; from Turkey, Boynik , S. and Güldalli , T. , An Interrupted History of Punk and Underground Resources in Turkey 1978–99 ( Athens : BAS , 2007 ) Google Scholar .

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Volume 26, Issue 2
DAVID WILKINSON (a1) , MATTHEW WORLEY (a2) and JOHN STREET (a3)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0960777316000357

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Fight back: Punk, politics and resistance

Fight back examines the different ways punk – as a youth/subculture – may provide space for political expression and action. Bringing together scholars from a range of academic disciplines (history, sociology, cultural studies, politics, English, music), it showcases innovative research into the diverse ways in which punk may be used and interpreted.

The essays are concerned with three main themes: identity, locality and communication. These, in turn, cover subjects relating to questions of class, age and gender; the relationship between punk, locality and socio-political context; and the ways in which punk’s meaning has been expressed from within the subculture and reflected by the media. Jon Savage, the foremost commentator and curator of punk’s cultural legacy, provides an afterword on punk’s impact and dissemination from the 1970s to the present day.

Manchester University Press, 2017.

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The Punk Discourse: From Subculture To Lifestyle

As a visible entity punk was galvanized into being under its own name in New York and London in the middle seventies during the Cold War. On the one hand it is seen as a manifestation of postmodernism, on the other hand it is about an underground youth culture that expressed its revolutionary attitude mainly through music (the punk rock genre) and an outrageous, collage-like clothing style rebelling against conformity, authority, the establishment, class hierarchy and celebrating the collapse of traditional forms of meaning. However, Birmingham scholars argued that culture industries destroyed the authenticity of the subculture without adequately considering either the ideological underpinnings of the subcultures in question (i.e. punk), nor the concept of authentic identity. Hence, this paper attempts to unmask these ideological underpinnings and their authenticity in relation to punk, its signifying practices and intractably subversive features that can also be linked to its predecessor counterculture movements. This will shed new light on punk as a complex historical and cultural phenomenon and on the evolution and refashioning of the " anarchic " discourse. Besides tracing the punk ideology and aesthetics back to the movers and shakers of the art and literary world of the 20 th century (Dada, Situationists, Beat movement, Andy Warhol), I will also consider how the original punk movement, short-lived and nihilistic, marked the beginning of a phase of ideological struggle within popular music itself. Its broad cultural influence started with the postpunk (1979-1984) trying to built an authentic alternative culture with its own independent infrastructure of labels, distribution and records stores and releasing small magazines and fanzines taking on the role of an alternative media. This do-it-yourself concept i.e. punk ethos proliferated like a virus with the global expansion of electronic music nevertheless finding always new ways to remain detached from the dominant culture. In conclusion, the paper discusses that the punk´s appeal doesn´t lie in Hebdige´s semiotic flux but rather the punk´s formal stability with its clear ideological and formal elements. Perhaps only fragmented, these ideological and formal elements of punk resonate unchanged in current alternative lifestyles permeating the music, theory and art either produced or consumed. These discourses form part of the unconstrained self-expression of punk and it´s oppositional point of view in the world.

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Since its UK inception 40 years ago, punk has profoundly changed not only music, but art, fashion and culture, giving many disillusioned young people a voice in the process. Yet how do punk’s anti-authoritarian tendencies fit with the academy’s critical investigation of the genre, as demonstrated by the British Library’s current exhibition ‘Punk 1976-78’? Does Bayard’s definition reflect a contemporary philosophy of punk? Is punk static, or has it evolved beyond its initial incarnation? And what role does anarcho-punk have to play in this history? This symposium seeks to explore the artistic approach of punk through its social, political and cultural manifestations. We invite both researchers and practitioners of punk to contribute papers and performances exploring punk’s impact on the wider culture beyond music, including the arts, ethnography, sociology, politics, fashion, film, history, musicology, pedagogy and literature. We invite presentations from the perspective of any discipline. Topics may include (but are not limited to): - Punk and Society - Literature, philosophy, art & punk - Anarcho punk - Punk and the academy - Transnational punk - Punk painting and photography - Gender and punk - Fashion, aesthetics, and style - Practices of production - Musicology - Politics - Subculture - Proto and post-punk movements - Concepts of independence and DIY cultures - Archiving punk - Race and the punk movement - Global cross pollination of punk art

Guy Mankowski , Laura Way , Mike Dines

‘Post-punk’ has been defined in a variety of ways. Some commentators view it primarily as a reaction to punk, with distinct musical features. Others debate whether its organizing principle can even be found in a stylistic unity. Ryan Moore has described how punk responded to a ‘condition of postmodernity.’ In his view, post-modernism represented an ‘exhaustion of totalizing metanarratives.’ Within this context punk used bricolage to ‘turn signs and spectacles against themselves, as a means of waging war on society.’ For the purposes of this piece post-punk is considered a response to punk’s response to postmodernism. This article addresses how manifestos came to be used in post-punk. Using as a starting point Julia Downes’ description of musical manifestos in riot grrl as a ‘key way to define…ideological, aesthetic and political goals.’ A series of chronological case studies investigate the key components and aesthetics of the post-punk manifesto, which include the use of lists, itemisation and direct, second-person address.

Dylan Clark

"This paper explores the wane of "classical youth subcultures," with the rise of commodified rebellion. Discusses the emergence of new modes of subcultural identity and resistance, as they emerged in the greater punk communities. Suggests that anarchist political practices are emerging at the heart of 21st century "subcultural" praxis. "

Prapasiri Sutthisom

Giacomo Bottà

Evan Barnes

Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 383-394

Michelle Phillipov

Helena Motoh

All over Former Yugoslavia the eighties were marked by an appearance of a great number of new alternative culture movements, while at the same time significant new ideas were introduced in the field of philosophy and theory in general. The proposed paper focuses on a particular example of dialogue between theory and culture in this period: on the three special issues of the journal Problemi in 1981, 1982 and 1983 that were dedicated to the punk movement, i.e. the so-called Punk Problemi. It begins by analyzing the editorial to the first of these three issues, and its alleged “agreement” with the thesis that punk should be viewed as a symptom. The discrepancy between the critics of punk and the viewpoint of the editorship of the Problemi and their contributors is further explored through the analysis of the articles published in the three special editions. Finally the Punk Problemi are juxtaposed to developments in theory in the early eighties, especially the works on the theory of i...

Lana Andelane

Alexander Hay

This chapter is about punk music, or rather, one of its many meanings. Indeed, if there can ever be one certainty about punk, amidst the myriad arguments about what it is or is not, it is that punk is certainly versatile. In its time, it has served as agitprop, business model, youth movement, protest, means of promoting politics from a wide spectrum of beliefs, and even entertainment. It is a movement that has been both commercialized and has subverted commercialization. Indeed, part of the reason why punk remains a topic of discussion is precisely this multiplicity of purpose, a tendency towards both fragmentation and reinvention. However, the chapter will focus in particular on whether punk can serve as a means of understanding history, as a kind of document of its times and if so, how. In so doing, the question that will be asked is not if punk can serve as a kind of formal historical document – which, of course, was never its intention to begin with – but instead whether it can ...

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Subculture of Punk: Wearing, Music, Values and Ideas

Table of contents, stevenson, ray. a photograph of jonny rotten, 1976, punks wearing dr. martens, 1983.

How has Punk changed till today? (50-100 words) Punk has become an inspiration and a form of “art” today. It can be found in museums and became an attraction defining a part of British cultural history. Punk today is very subdued, totally different from the original concept of punk in the past. People today mainly mimic the clothes in a much tone down version. However the true essence of punk is not just about the aesthetics of clothing and style, it is about the expression of oneself, standing up for something you strongly believe in or going against a cause for something. Punk has been commercialised and many people are just after the aesthetics which loses the main essence of something so unique and different in youth culture that went out of it’s reach to voice out their opinions. Punk sold a lifestyle and spirit of energy that have seem to be forgotten and overlapped by the daring and bold appearance. People do not just listen to one genre of music like people of the past. People are exposed to many genres and enjoy each of them equally.
Has Punk & the designed items influenced other cultures / sub-cultures? become mainstream? or is it a unique niche only within Punk (100 words) Punk has expanded into many micro categories e.g. grunge, steampunk, seapunk and so on. Dr Martens has resurfaced into following subcultures after punk like grunge. Dr Martens have also become a fashion statement to all sorts of people not solely a specific group or subculture. Owning a pair of Dr Martens does not make you a punk. Fashion itself has become very broad and more acceptable of pushing boundaries.
Is the Punk subculture relevant today? What form does it take and have the designed items changed? Punk in the fashion industry has changed from chaos to couture. The punk style once opposed everything about fashion and it’s industry, now turns to punk for inspiration. Even in couture where it would never be possible in the past, something so bizarre and insulting like punk becoming chic and high fashion was unheard of. The safety pins are a great example of this, whereby the safety pin is a cheap small piece of metal that was used a a fashion statement in clothes and as replacement of facial jewellery. Now, the safety pin can be seen as actual jewellery and used as material to make an entire dress. The use of safety pins can be seen in works of designers like John Paul Gautier and Marc Jacobs. In 2016, the safety pin was used as a form of protest against the election of Donald Trump. The safety pin was worn by men as a sign to support the victims who were ostracised by Trump during his election campaigns.

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110 Subculture Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

Inside This Article

Subcultures are groups within a larger society that have their own distinct norms, values, and practices. These subcultures can be based on a variety of factors, including age, ethnicity, interests, or beliefs. Exploring subcultures can provide valuable insights into the diversity and complexity of society, as well as the ways in which individuals navigate their identities and communities.

If you're looking for inspiration for an essay on subcultures, here are 110 topic ideas and examples to get you started:

The punk subculture: its origins, values, and impact on mainstream culture
The hip-hop subculture: how music, fashion, and language shape identity
The goth subculture: exploring themes of darkness, individuality, and rebellion
The skateboarding subculture: how a hobby became a lifestyle and community
The gamer subculture: from arcades to online communities, gaming as a cultural phenomenon
The LGBTQ+ subculture: the history, struggles, and triumphs of queer communities
The cosplay subculture: blurring the lines between fantasy and reality through costume play
The surfer subculture: the connection between nature, sport, and identity
The rave subculture: electronic music, dance, and the search for transcendence
The fitness subculture: bodybuilding, CrossFit, and the pursuit of physical perfection
The vegan subculture: ethics, activism, and the rise of plant-based diets
The biker subculture: freedom, rebellion, and the open road
The prepper subculture: preparing for the end of the world and the collapse of society
The tattoo subculture: body art as a form of self-expression and identity
The metalhead subculture: heavy music, dark themes, and a sense of belonging
The hacker subculture: technology, activism, and the fight for digital freedom
The hippie subculture: peace, love, and the counterculture of the 1960s
The kawaii subculture: cute aesthetics, consumer culture, and the pursuit of happiness
The skater subculture: street culture, rebellion, and the DIY ethos
The surfer subculture: beach culture, environmentalism, and the pursuit of the perfect wave
The streetwear subculture: fashion, status symbols, and the commodification of cool
The drag subculture: gender performance, artistry, and the celebration of queerness
The hipster subculture: irony, nostalgia, and the quest for authenticity
The conspiracy theory subculture: skepticism, paranoia, and the search for hidden truths
The witch subculture: spirituality, feminism, and the revival of ancient practices
The fitness subculture: body positivity, self-improvement, and the wellness industry
The sneakerhead subculture: collectibles, trends, and the cult of sneakers
The car enthusiast subculture: speed, aesthetics, and the culture of cars
The punk subculture: DIY ethics, anti-authoritarianism, and the rejection of mainstream culture
The anime subculture: Japanese animation, fandom, and the global reach of otaku culture
The metal subculture: heavy music, subversion, and the sense of belonging in a community of outcasts
The hip-hop subculture: rap music, street art, and the cultural impact of urban youth
The skateboard subculture: counterculture, rebellion, and the ethos of DIY skateboarding
The gamer subculture: online communities, competitive gaming, and the culture of esports
The goth subculture: dark aesthetics, romanticism, and the celebration of the macabre
The rave subculture: electronic music, dance culture, and the search for transcendence in the club scene
The drag subculture: gender performance, artistry, and the celebration of queerness in drag shows
The cosplay subculture: costume play, fandom, and the blurring of fantasy and reality at conventions
The fitness subculture: bodybuilding, fitness trends, and the pursuit of physical excellence in the gym
The punk subculture: DIY fashion, anti-establishment politics, and the spirit of rebellion in punk rock
The surfer subculture: beach culture, surf lifestyle, and the connection between nature and sport
The skateboard subculture: street culture, DIY skateboarding, and the sense of community in skate parks
The metal subculture: heavy music, subversive themes, and the sense of belonging in the metal community
The hip-hop subculture: rap music, street fashion, and the cultural influence of hip-hop culture
The gamer subculture: online gaming, virtual communities, and the rise of esports as a global phenomenon
The goth subculture: dark aesthetics, gothic fashion, and the celebration of the macabre in goth culture
The rave subculture: electronic music, dance culture, and the search for transcendence through music and dance
The drag subculture: gender performance, drag queens, and the art of transformation in drag shows
The cosplay subculture: costume play, fandom, and the creative expression of pop culture at comic conventions
The fitness subculture: body positivity, health trends, and the pursuit of physical well-being in the fitness industry
The punk subculture: anti-establishment politics, punk fashion, and the spirit of rebellion in punk rock music
The surfer subculture: beach lifestyle, surf culture, and the connection between nature and sport in surfing
The skateboard subculture: street culture, skateboarding tricks, and the sense of community in skate parks
The metal subculture: heavy music, dark themes, and the sense of belonging in the metal community
The hip-hop subculture: rap music, street fashion, and the cultural impact of hip-hop culture on mainstream society
The gamer subculture: online gaming, virtual communities, and the rise of esports as a competitive industry
The goth subculture: gothic fashion, dark aesthetics, and the celebration of the macabre in goth culture
The skateboard sub

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The Construction Of The Punk Subculture

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Topic: Human Development , Subculture

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7 responses to “Punk, Politics and Youth Culture, 1976-84”

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" British punk emerged in 1976, coalescing around the Sex Pistols and spreading – virus-like – into the suburbs, provinces and cities of the UK. Almost from the outset, punk proved a contested cultural space."

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Fight back: Punk, politics and resistance

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The Punk Discourse: From Subculture To Lifestyle

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The Ethical Commitment to Be a Punk

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Subculture of Punk: Wearing, Music, Values and Ideas

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110 Subculture Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

The Construction Of The Punk Subculture

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