Inside Subculture The Postmodern Meaning of Style David Muggleton OXFORD Inside Subculture Dress, Body, Culture Series Editor Joanne B. Eicher, Regents’ Professor, University of Minnesota Advisory Board: Ruth Barnes, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford Helen Callaway, CCCRW, University of Oxford James Hall, University of Illinois at Chicago Beatrice Medicine, California State University, Northridge Ted Polhemus, Curator, “Street Style” Exhibition, Victoria & Albert Museum Griselda Pollock, University of Leeds Valerie Steele, The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology Lou Taylor, University of Brighton John Wright, University of Minnesota Books in this provocative series seek to articulate the connections between culture and dress which is defined here in its broadest possible sense as any modification or supplement to the body. Interdisciplinary in approach, the series highlights the dialogue between identity and dress, cosmetics, coiffure, and body alterations as manifested in practices as varied as plastic surgery, tattooing, and ritual scarification. The series aims, in particular, to analyze the meaning of dress in relation to popular culture and gender issues and will include works grounded in anthropology, sociology, history, art history, literature, and folklore. ISSN: 1360-466X Previously published titles in the Series Helen Bradley Foster, “New Raiments of Self”: African American Clothing in the Antebellum South Claudine Griggs, S/he: Changing Sex and Changing Clothes Michaele Thurgood Haynes, Dressing Up Debutantes: Pageantry and Glitz in Texas Anne Brydon and Sandra Niesson, Consuming Fashion: Adorning the Transnational Body Dani Cavallaro and Alexandra Warwick, Fashioning the Frame: Boundaries, Dress and the Body Judith Perani and Norma H. Wolff, Cloth, Dress and Art Patronage in Africa Linda B. Arthur, Religion, Dress and the Body Paul Jobling, Fashion Spreads: Word and Image in Fashion Photography Fadwa El-Guindi, Veil: Modesty, Privacy and Resistance Thomas S. Abler, Hinterland Warriors and Military Dress: European Empires and Exotic Uniforms Linda Welters, Folk Dress in Europe and Anatolia: Beliefs about Protection and Fertility Kim K.P. Johnson and Sharron J. Lennon, Appearance and Power Barbara Burman, The Culture of Sewing Annette Lynch, Dress, Gender and Cultural Change Antonia Young, Women Who Become Men DRESS, BODY, CULTURE Inside Subculture The Postmodern Meaning of Style David Muggleton Oxford • New York First published in 2000 by Berg Editorial offices: 150 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JJ, UK 838 Broadway, Third Floor, New York, NY 10003-4812, USA © David Muggleton 2000, 2002 Paperback edition reprinted in 2002. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of Berg. Berg is an imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 1 85973 347 6 (Cloth) 1 85973 352 2 (Paper) Typeset by JS Typesetting, Wellingborough, Northants. Printed in the United Kingdom by Biddles Ltd, Guildford and King’s Lynn. Contents Acknowledgements vii 1 Back to Reality? My Experience with Cultural Studies 1 2 A Neo-Weberian Approach to the Study of Subcultural Style 9 3 Postmodern Subcultures and Aesthetic Modernity 33 4 Distinctive Individuality and Subcultural Affiliation 55 5 Commitment, Appearance and the Self 81 6 Change, Continuity and Comparison 107 7 Resistance, Incorporation and Authenticity 131 8 Cultural Expression or Class Contradiction? 157 Appendix: Fieldwork Details and Interview Schedule 171 Bibliography 175 Index 191 This Page Intentionally Left Blank Acknowledgements During the past several years, I have become indebted to many people for their part in helping to make Inside Subculture possible. I would therefore like to acknowledge them here, and begin with the Economic and Social Research Council for the three-year Research Studentship award (R00429234234) that enabled me to undertake the original Ph.D. research on which the book is based. The transition from thesis to book would not have happened without the interest shown by Kathryn Earle of Berg publishers. The writing of the book was made possible by the generous sabbatical provided to me by University College Chichester. Thanks also to Professor Nick Abercrombie for his invaluable advice and skilful guidance on the original thesis. I could not have been more fortunate in my allocation of a supervisor. Grateful thanks also to my best friend Edwina for putting me up during my fieldwork sessions in Brighton, and for putting up with me more generally. I must also extend my appreciation to Pennie Drinkall, Julia Harrison and Maggy Taylor, who between them skilfully transcribed the vast majority of the taped interviews; and to Bob Jessop and Chris Quinn in the Sociology Department at Lancaster University, and Graham Stodd and Chris Laws at University College Chichester for making available important resources. I would also like to mention Berg’s anonymous reviewer for their very detailed and constructive comments on the original thesis, David Phelps for his skilful copy-editing of the typescript, and everyone else who sent letters, e-mails, articles, papers and theses, etc., made helpful remarks and suggestions, or in any way contributed to the finished product; they are in alphabetical order: Jeffrey Arnett, Gord Barensten, Shane Blackmon, Colin Campbell, Cathie Dingwall, Kathy Fox, Simon Gottschalk, Scott Lash, Ben Malbon, Cressida Miles, Justin O’Connor, Ted Polhemus, Steve Redhead, Balihar Sanghera, Dan Shapiro, David Sleightholme, Geoff Stahl, Sarah Thornton and Jeff Webb. The biggest debt, however, is that I owe to all my interviewees. Without the willingness of subjects to put their trust in virtual strangers and talk about themselves at great length, such a book as this would remain an impossible undertaking. For their permission to allow my photographs of them to appear in this book, a particular thank you to Duncan, Robin, Jim, Jane, Sean and vii Acknowledgements Peter. I would also like to acknowledge the following for permission to reproduce flyers: Dave Nimmo (Backstreet Boogaloo!); Jimmy Tonik (Smashed Blocked); Ian Mackenzie (Immediate Clothing). An earlier version of Chapter 3 of this book appeared as ‘The Post-subculturalist’ in The Clubcultures Reader (edited by Steve Redhead et al.) 1997; and I would like to thank Blackwell publishers for their permission to re-use some of this material. Grateful acknowledgements also to Littlebrown for their permission to reproduce the cover of Wigan Pier Revisited. David Muggleton Chichester viii Back to Reality? My Experience with Cultural Studies 1 Back to Reality? My Experience with Cultural Studies1 Despite Hebdige’s own gloomy prognostication about the inevitable gulf that separates the intellectual from the practical semiotician, Subculture was reviewed in publications outside the academic circuit, and has become part of the ‘currency’ which circulates in and amongst those proclaiming some form of subcultural identity. Ann Beezer: ‘Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style’ (1992: 115) So what do you do about style? Sociology, yeah? Yeah, I did that stuff at college. Hebdige and them lot. It’s all bollocks, isn’t it? (Fieldwork ‘currency exchange’: A ‘practical semiotician’ on the 1994 crisis in the pound.) According to Max Weber (1864–1920), all sociology is necessarily ‘value- relevant’ (Weber 1949) in that the selection of a research topic, the decision to investigate particular aspects over others, and the logic and method of enquiry employed are all inevitably grounded in the subjective values of the researcher. A useful way of introducing this book might therefore be to ‘come clean’ about my own personal reasons for writing it. From late 1976 onwards, I became increasingly involved in the emerging provincial punk rock scene. I took on certain aspects of the subculture’s dress codes, jettisoning my flares for ‘straights’, platforms for trainers, and my bright orange, wing-collared shirt and fat knot tie for a white button-down bri-nylon museum piece worn with a stripy school tie left hanging at half-mast. I even amateurishly chopped my Ron Wood style feather-cut into a spiky crop à la Richard Hell. I listened less and less to Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane and The Byrds and more to The Ramones, Blondie and The Sex Pistols. I experienced the culture shock of progressing (regressing?) in a matter of months from the relative mellow- ness of an Eric Clapton concert (where we all sat on the floor) to the manic ferocity of a Stranglers gig (where, as in a crowded kop end at football, my 1 Inside Subculture: The Postmodern Meaning of Style feet didn’t always touch the floor). I even ‘played’ the bass guitar in a punk rock band. Yet this was never a sudden or complete transformation. It occurred gradually and sequentially. I cropped my hair in stages. I never sported safety pins through my lip, nor stopped wearing my beloved denim jacket. Complete Control was one of the most electrifying records I’d ever heard; yet so, too, was Heartbreak Hotel. But even then Rock ‘n’ Roll and the Beatles meant more to me than the Clash or the Damned – they still do. I hadn’t heard of punk until ‘after the subculture had surfaced and been publicized’.2 I wasn’t aware of Britain’s economic decline or the fracturing of the political consensus, nor was I angry about unemployment (even when I was unemployed). On the other hand, personal freedom and the search for experience were (still are) very important to me. Had I been born several years earlier I might have been a hippy; a decade before, I would undoubtedly have become a mod. If I had been a 1950s teenager, I might even have taken on some form of teddy boy identity (after my punk haircut grew out, I wore it greased back in a rocker style).