(Hall & Jefferson, 1976). Hebdige’s (1979) classic study, for instance,
“read” punk as a contentious although ultimately innocuous attempt to
resolve the feelings of disorder that disenfranchised youth felt in the
postwar period, as working class community, culture, and opportunity
eroded. Later scholars criticized his formulation, howeverand others
similar to it for equating all subcultural activity with working class
resistance and relying on semiotic analysis in lieu of empirical research
(Bennett & Kahn-Harris, 2004; Williams, 2011).
Recent studies of punk, which probe the meanings that participants
attach to their own behaviors, show that the subculture revolves around
the pursuit of self-discovery and self-actualization more than the politics of
class (Andes, 1998; Baron, 1989; Fox, 1987; Gaines, 1991; Moore, 2004).
Muggleton (2000) found that “punk politics [were] best understood in
terms of personal self-determination” (p. 149).Lewin and Williams (2009),
similarly, found that punk ideology involved rejecting external socializa-
tion, reflexively enacting one’s perceived inner essence, and making a perso-
nal commitment to self-discovery. Both findings are consistent with
broader advances in subcultural theory, which suggest that subcultural par-
ticipation tends to pursue free self-expression more than it challenges “the
system” or resolves class-based social strain (Bennett & Kahn-Harris, 2004;
Muggleton & Weinzierl, 2004; Williams, 2011).^5
Studying contemporary subcultures like punk provides fertile ground for
investigating how young people make choices about identity and achieve
meaningful self-concepts. First, punk targets the appropriate demographic;
most participants are young, and almost all begin to identify with the sub-
culture during adolescence. Second, because punk maintains an opposi-
tional image, participants must actively choose to identify with the
subculture. Structural agents of socialization generally do not interpellate
young people into punk identities on the basis of ascribed characteristics,
and local agents of socialization (e.g., parents and teachers) do not typi-
cally encourage identification with the subculture.
Third, asMuggleton (2000)and Lewin and Williams (2009)note, punk
revolves around self-actualization and “finding one self.” As 21-year-old
Trevor told me during an interview, punk is “just figuring out who you are
and what it is your morals are instead of somebody else telling you what
[you] should be [and] how you should feel about things.” Studying the sub-
culture thus offers in situ insight into how participants negotiate what
values they embrace, who they are, and who they desire to become.
Fourth, many punks express uncertainty with regard to their identities
priorto subcultural participation. A desire to shore up one’s self-concept in
Ecstatic Ritual as a New Mode of Youth Identity Work 169