Andy Bennett

Punk’s Not Dead: The Continuing Significance of Punk Rock for an Older Generation of Fans

This article examines how older fans of punk rock articulate their continuing attachment to the music and its associated visual style.While sociological research on popular music audiences is well established, little attention has been paid to the articulation and management of fan practices of individuals beyond the age of 30. Based on ethnographic interviews conducted with older punk fans in East Kent, England, the article begins to redress this oversight in studies of popular music audiences.This involves an assessment of both the way in which articulations of punk style transgress with age from the visual to the biographical and how older punks develop particular discursive practices as a means of legitimating their place within a scene dominated by younger punk fans.

The post-subcultural turn: some reflections 10 years on

This article investigates and evaluates the key tenets of the post-subcultural turn as this has informed discussion and debate among youth culture researchers during the last 10 years. While the post-subcultural turn has produced a wealth of new analytical tools and conceptual approaches, as well as providing a basis for several anthologies, it has also given rise to a series of critical concerns regarding the viability of post-subculture as an alternative approach to the study of youth. A key, and perhaps predictable, criticism of post-subcultural theory is that it adopts a naïve, and essentially celebratory, stance regarding the role of the cultural industries in shaping the identities and lifestyles of youth. Similarly, it has been argued that, despite the claims of post-subcultural theory regarding the emergence of new, individualised and reflexive youth identities, one does not need to look very far to see evidence of the on-going role played by structural inequalities in shaping the life chances, and cultural affiliations, of youth. Where then, does this leave youth cultural studies? What, if any, are the insights, theoretical and methodological, that can be drawn from post-subcultural turn? In view of the critical debates inspired by the post-subcultural turn, what should be the key criteria for youth cultural studies over the coming decade?

Researching youth culture and popular music: a methodological critique.

In this article I argue the need for critical evaluation of qualitative research methodology in sociological studies of the relationship between youth culture and popular music. As the article illustrates, there is currently an absence of critical debate concerning methodological issues in this field of sociological research. In the first part of the article I begin to account for this absence by illustrating how early research on youth and music rejected the need for empirical research, relying instead on theories and concepts drawn from cultural Marxism. The second part of the article illustrates how the legacy of this early body of work in youth and music research manifests itself in current research which, although empirically grounded, is characterized by an almost total lack of engagement with methodological issues such as negotiating access to the field, management of field relations and ethical codes. Similarly problematic is the uncritical acceptance on the part of some researchers of their insider knowledge of particular youth musics and scenes as a means of gathering empirical data. In the final part of the article I focus on the issue of insider knowledge and the need for critical evaluation of its use as a methodological tool in field-based youth and music research.

Hip hop am Main: the localization of rap music and hip hop culture:

This article examines the way in which rap music and hip hop culture have been appropriated and reworked by the youth of Turkish and Moroccan communities in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. I begin by considering how, via the incorporation of German and Turkish lyrics into self-composed rap songs, Frankfurt rap groups have been able to turn the genre into a highly localized mode of expression. More specifically, such a reworking of the rap genre has enabled its use as a medium for the voicing of issues relating to the problems of racism and citizenship with which ethnic minority groups newly or recently settled in Germany are faced. In the second part of the article I consider some of the resources which Frankfurt rappers have been able to draw upon in their attempts to rework hip hop as a localized mode of expression.

In Defence of Neo-Tribes: A Response to Blackman and Hesmondhalgh

Since the late 1990s, a number of sociologists and cultural theorists have been engaged in an attempt to rethink subculture using a range of concepts drawn from contemporary sociological theory. Among my own contributions to this work has been a reframing of collective youth identities using Maffesoli’s (1996) concept of neo-tribes (Bennett 1999, 2000). In the previous issue of the Journal of Youth Studies (vol. 8, no. 1) my position vis-à-vis the application of neo-tribes in youth cultural research was critiqued in two articles, by Shane Blackman and David Hesmondhalgh, respectively. Blackman locates my study of neo-tribes within a body of work that he refers to as ‘postmodern subcultural theory’, which, for Blackman, also encompasses Redhead (1990) and Muggleton’s (2000) notion of ‘post-subculture’ and Miles’s (2000) work on youth ‘lifestyles’. Blackman’s key concern is that my abandonment of subculture in favour of neo-tribe as a means of understanding the creative practices of youth constitutes, in turn, an abandonment of any consideration of the structural inequalities that continue to impact on the lives of young people and shape their life chances. The result, according to Blackman is an uncritical celebration of consumerism, a point that is echoed in Hesmondhalgh’s article. Certainly, my work on neo-tribes was inspired to some extent by a then emergent literature on consumerism and reflexivity, and re-reading the work I would admit that the claims I made about consumerism and its significance for youth lifestyles perhaps require further qualification. Thus, to set this particular piece of the record straight, my intention was not to ‘celebrate’ consumerism, but rather to situate it as a motor-force in late modern society and a key resource for individuals in the construction of social identities and forming of social relations with others. The objections raised by Blackman and Hesmondhalgh in relation to my positing of consumerism as a creative resource for young people in this respect are of course indebted to the cultural populist argument of writers such as McGuigan (1992) who equate such interpretations of consumerism with a neo-liberalist ideology that

Rappin’ on the Tyne: White Hip Hop Culture in Northeast England – an Ethnographic Study

This article offers an ethnographic account of the significance of rap music and hip hop culture for white youth in the city of Newcastle upon Tyne in north-east England. Although white appropriations of black music in Britain have been well documented in sociological work, there is currently very little research on white responses to rap and hip hop. During the course of this article I identify two distinct responses on the part of white Newcastle youth to rap and hip hop. I then go on to argue that, despite their differing nature, each of these responses can be seen as bound up with issues of locality and local experience.

MyTribe: Post-subcultural Manifestations of Belonging on Social Network Sites

Since the early 2000s, sociologists of youth have been engaged in a debate concerning the relevance of ‘subculture’ as a theoretical framework in the light of more recent postmodern-influenced interpretations of youth identities as fluid, dynamic and reflexively constructed. Utilizing ethnographic data collected on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, this article considers such debates in relation to social network sites such as MySpace and Facebook. Although online identity expression has been interpreted as exhibiting subcultural qualities, preliminary empirical research informing this article lends itself to a more neo-tribal reading.

Music, media and urban mythscapes: a study of the ‘Canterbury Sound’

The purpose of this article is twofold. First, to illustrate how recently developed technologies are giving rise to new ways of conceptualizing the relationship between music and place. Applying the concept of mythscapes, developed from Appadurai’s work, to the ‘Canterbury Sound’, a term recently revived and adapted by a website-centred fanbase to describe a loosely defined back-catalogue of albums, songs and home-recorded musical experiments, the article argues that the city of Canterbury is being inscribed with a series of urban myths relating to its perceived role in the creation of a musical style deemed by fans to be locally specific. Second, through its analysis of the Canterbury Sound’s ‘construction’ on the Internet, the article considers the extent to which the Canterbury Sound can be considered a ‘virtual’ scene, Internet communication replacing more conventional forms of celebrating collective musical taste as these emerge through the sociality of club, concert hall and festival-based scenes.

Associations between e-cigarette access and smoking and drinking behaviours in teenagers

BackgroundPublic health concerns regarding e-cigarettes and debate on appropriate regulatory responses are focusing on the need to prevent child access to these devices. However, little is currently known about the characteristics of those young people that are accessing e-cigarettes.MethodsUsing a cross-sectional survey of 14-17 year old school students in North West England (n = 16,193) we examined associations between e-cigarette access and demographics, conventional smoking behaviours, alcohol consumption, and methods of accessing cigarettes and alcohol. Access to e-cigarettes was identified through a question asking students if they had ever tried or purchased e-cigarettes.ResultsOne in five participants reported having accessed e-cigarettes (19.2%). Prevalence was highest among smokers (rising to 75.8% in those smoking >5 per day), although 15.8% of teenagers that had accessed e-cigarettes had never smoked conventional cigarettes (v.13.6% being ex-smokers). E-cigarette access was independently associated with male gender, having parents/guardians that smoke and students’ alcohol use. Compared with non-drinkers, teenagers that drank alcohol at least weekly and binge drank were more likely to have accessed e-cigarettes (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] 1.89, P < 0.001), with this association particularly strong among never-smokers (AOR 4.59, P < 0.001). Among drinkers, e-cigarette access was related to: drinking to get drunk, alcohol-related violence, consumption of spirits; self-purchase of alcohol from shops or supermarkets; and accessing alcohol by recruiting adult proxy purchasers outside shops.ConclusionsThere is an urgent need for controls on the promotion and sale of e-cigarettes to children. Findings suggest that e-cigarettes are being accessed by teenagers more for experimentation than smoking cessation. Those most likely to access e-cigarettes may already be familiar with illicit methods of accessing age-restricted substances.

Towards a cultural sociology of popular music

This article provides a series of critical reflections on the development of sociological studies in relation to popular music and the development of a cultural sociology of popular music. The piece begins by mapping the origins of popular music as a focus for academic study and the indebtedness of this body of work to Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies-style cultural studies analyses of popular music audiences and their reception of popular music texts. This is followed by a review of sociological work on popular music and the emergence of what could be termed a proto-cultural sociological approach. The final section of the article considers the cultural turn, its impact on cultural approaches to sociology and the significance of this for the development of a cultural sociology of popular music.