Do-It-Yourself Mobilization: Punk and Social Movements

Abstract

The intersection between music and social movements is a fertile area of research. We present three case studies taken from punk-the Rock Against Racism campaign in Britain during the late 1970s, the American hardcore scene of the 1980s, and the riot grrrl feminism of the early 1990s-as instances where music and subculture have not simply figured as symbolic forms of resistance and identity formation but also as a means of organizing protest, raising consciousness, and creating change. The central mechanism that has allowed punk subcultures to achieve high levels of mobilization has been the do-it-yourself ethic, which demands that punks take matters of cultural production into their own hands by making music, fanzines, and record labels, creating a network of venues for live music performance, as well as creating other forms of micromedia that are commercially independent of the corporate culture industry. We use these case studies to both draw attention to neglected areas of empirical research and as a means to intervene in theoretical debates that have tended to polarize social movement studies between paradigms that emphasize structural phenomena and those that emphasize cultural factors.

I Was a Teenage Vegan: Motivation and Maintenance of Lifestyle Movements

“…As I will show in the analysis, about half of the participants in this study also self‐identified as punk and participated in the punk subculture, which had a significant effect on their veganism. Researchers have shown how a DIY, or “do it yourself” approach, is important for the recruitment of young subculturalists, specifically punks (Moore and Roberts ). Punks distinguish between “real and fake” subcultural participation, or subcultural “production” versus mere “consumption,” as a way of developing authentic subcultural identities (Lewin and Williams ; Williams ).…”

The Elephant in the Room: Youth, Cognition, and Student Groups in Mass Social Movements

“…These spaces are not only communal settings for cultural activities, but also involve "patronage of specific cafes, bookshops, meditation and yoga centers social contexts to experiment with new lifestyles" [35] (p. 110). Punk, anarchist, autonomist and squatter communities are also such centers [36,37]. Activities that occur there also synchronize with the findings about cognitive development and brain plasticity mentioned above-especially regarding the trimming of pathways-and how changing cultural expectations about the timetable for entering adulthood are processed and, in turn, reflected in the brain structure.…”

“…[36,44]. These groups and collectives have been widely studied in several contexts: in England [44][45][46][47], in North America, [37,48,49], in Germany [50,51], in Spain [52,53], and in Italy [36,54]. We know that there is considerable diversity in what these groups believe and how they are organized.…”

“…It is worth noting that an essential element of punk identity is missing from the statement, namely, the centrality of music. Moore and Roberts [37] discuss how listening to hard core music, dancing to it, making it, producing it, and talking about it are central behaviors of punk scenes. Yet, focusing on identity, lifestyle and music as a form of protest directs the rage of the anarchist-punk subculture away from the established protest repertoire, and thus, away from intergenerational linkages that alliances in protest campaign might bring and turns the group inward to identity-construction processes.…”

“Organizing Creativity: Enabling Creative Output, Process, and Organizing Practices”

“…Collaborative, supportive networks are crucial in advocating viable alternatives to the mainstream (Farrell 2001). For example, avant‐garde artists established their own performance venues and galleries (Wheeler 2003); punk subcultures formed fanzines to disseminate their writings and images (Moore and Roberts 2009); aficionados of Burning Man, an annual week‐long event devoted to the arts and community in the Nevada Black Rock Desert, have formed networks of projects and organizations that promote participatory art and Burning Man principles in other localities (Chen 2011). When such collectives clash over the legitimacy of their outputs, these conflicts can alter the larger field, unleashing creative outputs such as art movements on a larger scale (Bourdieu 1993).…”