
Series
Volume 5
Anthropology of Europe
Of Related Interest



See Related
Anthropology JournalsEmail Newsletters
Sign up for our email newsletters to get customized updates on new Berghahn publications.
Punks and Skins United
Identity, Class and the Economics of an Eastern German Subculture
Aimar Ventsel
194 pages, 15 illus., bibliog., index
ISBN 978-1-78920-860-3 $120.00/£89.00 Hb Published (August 2020)
eISBN 978-1-78920-861-0 eBook
Reviews
“[This book] is really interesting, provides fascinating insights and presents questions for the scholarship and future study.” • Matthew Worley, University of Reading
Description
Germany has one of the liveliest and well-developed punk scenes in the world. However, punk in this country is not just a style-based music community. This book provides an anthropological examination of how punk reflects the larger changes and contradictions in post-reunification Germany, such as social segmentation, east-west tensions and local politics. Punk in eastern Germany is a reaction to the marginalization of the working class. As a cultural, social and economic niche, punks create their own controversial “substitute society” to compensate for their low status in mainstream society.
Aimar Ventsel is a Senior Research Fellow of the Department of Ethnology in University of Tartu, Estonia. He was a founding member of the Siberia Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle. From 2009 to 2013 he participated as a Research Associate of the Department of Sociology, University of Warwick, in the project “Post-Socialist Punk: Beyond the double irony of self-abasement” where he conducted fieldwork in eastern Germany on punk and skinhead subculture.
Subject: Anthropology (General) Sociology Cultural Studies (General) Political and Economic Anthropology
Area: Germany
Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1. Transformation of East Germany: Wende and Socio-economic Framework for the Ossi-identity
Chapter 2. Punk Rock: Living Music
Chapter 3. Ostpunk – Arbeitslos und stolz! (Unemployed and proud!)
Chapter 4. One Law For Them, Another Law For Us: The Punk Rock Moral Economy
Chapter 5. Tolerated Illegality
Chapter 6. Gender in Punk Rock
Chapter 7. Punk Rock Territory: The Construction of Enemies
Conclusion
References
Index