Forty years have passed since the inception of punk, yet interest in punk history has intensified within the last decade or so. Along with a proliferation of memoirs, scholarship, and exhibitions, students of the genre have seen a decided shift toward the documentation and analysis of local scenes. In other words, while punk was certainly a global phenomenon, overarching histories of punk are now outnumbered by case studies that examine specific scenes and their relation to local histories of music, other creative practices, and formulations of place, race, gender, and sexuality. As a byproduct of this phenomenon, generalized understandings of punk as rebellion, aesthetic, or attitude have become productively complicated, just as London and New York no longer occupy the center of the conversation. What we have now is a proliferation of punk histories rather than a singular or linear narrative.
This essay explores the implications of conducting localized research...
University of California Press