Response

Subculture is Dead

In his review of Punk Record Labels and the Struggle for Autonomy , Pete Dale (2010) correctly notes that my book uses the sociological method of Pierre Bourdieu and rejects the kind of semiotic reading developed in Hebdidge’s Subculture: The Meaning of Style . What indeed are we to make of a book that is apparently based on no interviews, with claims about the class character of punk based on no data (1), a book that doesn’t even locate itself in place? Is punk really the same in London, Manchester and Belfast? Not to mention Australia, Canada, Spain and Mexico (2). How can we continue to write about “youth subculture” when older participants (Malcolm McLaren, Ian MacKaye, Jello Biafra, Kathleen Hanna) play key roles in shaping the scene? My book tries to address these kinds of specific issues. But Pete Dale insists on reading my book as a summary or overview of after the Sex Pistols. He interprets the book as making certain claims about punk subculture as a whole. For him, punk is full of energy, values a non-commercial ethics and has a potential for radical politics. He faults me for not giving sufficient emphasis to punk’s contribution to the 1999 anti-WTO uprising in Seattle, to , Afro-American, Queer or Latino punk. To dispose of the last point: my book ends with a full transcript of an interview with my friend Martín Sorrondeguy, a radical queer and Latino punk, who also took the photo on the front cover. The assumption that there is a single meaning in the culture leads Dale to completely misunderstand my book. He claims that I miss the radical potential of punk. My book is based on interviews with a sample of 61 record labels, mainly in the USA, but including four in Spain and four in Canada. (I would have liked to expand the international coverage but did not have research funding.) My book includes the following radical or anarchist record labels: La Idea, Potencial Hardcore, El Lokal, Lengua Armada, Sin Fronteras, , Havoc, Punks Before Profits, Gloom, Iron Pier, Firestarter, Rat Town, Ebullition, Subterranean, Feral Ward, A Wrench in the Gears, Dischord. That is, 17 out of a sample of 61 record labels have radical or anarchist politics. This includes Profane Existence, which is a well-known anarcho-punk fanzine and record label in Minneapolis. In my book I explicitly discuss the relation between such radical labels and others in the field which do not have such radical positions. In order to properly talk about this diversity we need to move beyond the model of a subculture and find terms for the actual complexity of practices. Bourdieu (1995) offers the concept of a cultural or artistic field. And in my book I document the emergence of such a semi- autonomous field of punk in the USA from the early 1980s. The situation is different in England, where there is a much greater overlap between indie-rock and punk than in the United States (3). My book describes the workings of the field in some detail. It is not something that is achieved (or lost) once and for all, but a matter of decisions, day by day. I think the problem with Dale is that like so many people who attack Bourdieu he hasn’t actually read him very much. He reduces Bourdieu to a few pages in Distinction about the new petite bourgeoisie (in France, post 1968). He doesn’t understand that Bourdieu offers not an orthodoxy but a method (4). What I show in my book is that Bourdieu’s method works quite well to describe the complexity of punk record labels that are operating today, mainly in the United States. The book maps the field using Correspondence Analysis. It shows, for example, that working-class kids tend to be more conservative in operating their record labels. The rebels tend to be dropouts from the middle class (many of them are actually college dropouts). Others with this background run quite commercial operations. In my book I describe the personal, ethical and business decisions that people make. When you step back from the individual cases, you can see a pattern of relations between the record labels. There are complex relations between class habitus and position-taking in the field of punk record labels. In his own essay on punk, Dale (2009) draws on Derrida to suggest ways in which new generations of punks play with it. I have no disagreement with this analysis of punk as on-going practice. But the assumption that there is a single punk culture leads Dale to cite studies of record labels from quite different situations and fields (post-punk in Britain in the 1980s, industrial dance music in the United States in the early 1990s) as if they refute my “theory”. It should be clear to any careful reader of my book that I do not have a theory in that sense (5). My book is not about punk subculture because I find the concept of a field in which participants take up different positions to be more useful. My book is not about indie record labels in general because it is about the workings of a particular field, which I describe in detail for those who wish to read what I actually wrote.

Trent University, Canada Alan O’Connor

Endnotes 1. Dave Laing (1985) did some rough calculations showing that punk musicians in Britain were only slightly more working-class than 1960s rock musicians. And more of the punk sample came from art-school backgrounds. 2. On international differences in punk scenes and their politics see O’Connor (1999), (2002a), (2002b), (2003a), (2003b), (2004), (2009). Punks usually talk about punk scenes, and not about a subculture. I suggest in my book that Bourdieu’s concept of field clarifies and extends this. 3. There is a huge literature on punk in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. The best general overview is George Hurchalla, Going Underground (2005). 4. My book uses Bourdieu’s later work on artistic fields in The Rules of Art (1995) and my research practice is based on The Weight of the World (1999). 5. For my critical response to Stacy Thompson’s Punk Productions see O’Connor (2005).

References Bourdieu, P. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Harvard University Press) Bourdieu, P. 1995. The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field (Stanford University Press) Bourdieu, P. et al. 1999. The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society (Stanford University Press) Dale, P. 2009. ‘Punk as Folk: Tradition as Inevitability, the Appearance of Subjectivity and the Circuitry of Justice’, Radical Musicology 4, online Dale, P. 2010. Review of Punk Record Labels and the Struggle for Autonomy , by Alan O’Connor, Popular Music 29, pp. 176-8 Hebdidge, D. 1979. Subculture: The Meaning of Style (Methuen) Hurchalla, G. 2005. Going Underground: American Punk 1979-1992 (Zuo Press) Laing, D. 1985. One Chord Wonders: Power and Meaning in (Open University Press) O’Connor, A. 1999. ‘Who’s Emma and the Limits of Cultural Studies,’ Cultural Studies, 13, pp. 691-702 O’Connor, A. 2002a. ‘Local scenes and dangerous crossroads: punk and theories of cultural hybridity,’ Popular Music, 21, pp. 147-58 O’Connor, A. 2002b. ‘Punk and Globalization: Mexico City and Toronto,’ in Paul Kennedy and Victor Roudometof eds., Communities across Borders (Routledge), pp. 143-55 O’Connor, A. 2003a. ‘Anarcho-Punk: Local Scenes and International Networks’, Journal of Anarchist Studies, 11, pp. 111-21 O’Connor, A. 2003b. ‘Punk subculture in Mexico and the anti-globalization movement’, New Political Science, 25, pp. 43-53 O’Connor, A. 2004. ‘Punk and Globalization: Spain and Mexico,’ International Journal of Cultural Studies, 7, pp. 175-195 O’Connor, A. 2005. Review of Punk Productions: Unfinished Business by Stacy Thompson, Popular Music, 24, pp. 159-61 O’Connor, A. 2009. Review of Making Scenes: Reggae, Punk, and Death Metal in 1990s Bali by Emma Baulch, Popular Music, 28, pp. 115-117