Prelims

Half Title Page

Subcultures, Bodies and Spaces

Series Page

Emerald Studies in Alternativity and Marginalization

Series Editors: Samantha Holland, Leeds Beckett University, UK and Karl Spracklen, Leeds Beckett University, UK

There is growing interest in work on transgression, liminality and subcultural capital within cultural studies, sociology and the social sciences more broadly. However, there is a lack of understanding of the problem of alternativity: what it means to be alternative in culture and society in modernity. What ‘alternative’ looks like is often left unexplored. The alternative is either assumed un-problematically, or stands in for some other form of social and cultural exclusion.

Alternativity delineates those spaces, scenes, subcultures, objects and practices in modern society that are actively designed to be counter or resistive to mainstream popular culture. Alternativity is associated with marginalization, both actively pursued by individuals, and imposed on individuals and subcultures. Alternativity was originally represented and constructed through acts of transgression and through shared subcultural capital. In contemporary society, alternative music scenes such as heavy metal, goth and punk have spread around the world; and alternative fashions and embodiment practices are now adopted by footballers and fashion models. The nature of alternativity as a communicative lifeworld is now questioned in an age of globalization and hyper-commodification.

This book series provides a stimulus to new research and new theorising on alternativity and marginalization. It provides a focus for scholars interested in sociological and cultural research that expands our understanding of the ontological status of spaces, scenes, subcultures, objects and practices defined as alternative, liminal or transgressive. In turn, the book series enables scholars to theorise about the status of the alternative in contemporary culture and society.

Title Page

Subcultures, Bodies and Spaces: Essays on Alternativity and Marginalization

Edited by

Samantha Holland

Leeds Beckett University, UK

Karl SpracklenLeeds Beckett University, UK

United Kingdom – North America – Japan India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2018

Copyright © Samantha Holland and Karl Spracklen

Chapter 1 © Therèsa M. Winge

Chapter 2 © Amanda DiGioia and Charlotte Naylor Davis

Chapter 3 © Thorsten Botz-Bornstein

Chapter 4 © Gareth Heritage

Chapter 5 © M. Selim Yavuz

Chapter 6 © Charlotte Dann

Chapter 7 © Beverly Yuen Thompson

Chapter 8 © M. Katharina Wiedlack

Chapter 9 © Abigail Gardner

Chapter 10 © Kay Inckle

Chapter 11 © Samantha Holland

Chapter 12 © Laura Way

Chapter 13 © Asya Draganova and Shane Blackman

Published under an exclusive licence

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78756-512-8 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-78756-511-1 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-78756-513-5 (Epub)

Contents

List of Contributors

Shane Blackman is Professor of Cultural Studies at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK. He has held posts at the University of Surrey and University of Greenwich. He has conducted research projects on sociological and ethnographic aspects of young people’s culture, undertaking funded research for the Home Office, London Health Authorities, the Kent Constabulary and local authorities in Kent, he was also a consultant for the British Board of Film Classification (London). His research interests include ethnography, social and cultural theory, youth cultures and subcultures, popular music, drug war politics, drug education and prevention, schooling, feminist theory, homeless young people and social exclusion.

Thorsten Botz-Bornstein is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Gulf University for Science and Technology in Kuwait. He is the author of Films and dreams: Tarkovsky, Bergman, Sokurov, Kubrick, Wong Kar-wai (2007) and Veils, nudity and tattoos: The new feminine aesthetic (2015), and has written a number of books on topics ranging from intercultural aesthetics to the philosophy of architecture. He has been researching in Japan and worked for the Center of Cognition of Hangzhou University, China, as well as at Tuskegee University, USA.

Charlotte Dann is Lecturer in Psychology at University of Northampton, UK, where she recently successfully defended her PhD. Her research is centred around qualitative explorations of tattoos, femininities and bodies.

Amanda DiGioia is a PhD student at The UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UK. Her PhD thesis focuses on the construction of the female gender in the Finnish heavy metal music scene. Amanda is a member of the International Society for Metal Music Studies, and has been published in Metal Music Studies, Horror Studies and Fan Phenomena: Game of Thrones.

Asya Draganova is Lecturer in Media and Communications at Birmingham City University, UK, as well as an active researcher within the fields of media and cultural studies, popular music and cultural sociology. Asya obtained her PhD in 2016; her doctoral thesis reflected on Asya’s ethnographic research into the creation and articulation of popular music within the social and political contexts of contemporary Bulgaria. Since completing her PhD, Asya has been involved with research dedicated to the value of popular music – particularly heavy metal and the ‘Canterbury Sound’ – for the heritage and contemporary identity of places and their communities.

Abigail Gardner is a Reader in Music and Media at the University of Gloucester- shire, UK. She writes on music and ageing, music video and music documentary. Publications include PJ Harvey and Music Video Performance (Routledge, 2015) and Rock on: Women, Ageing and Popular Music (Routledge, 2012). She is a founder member of the Centre for Women, Ageing and Media (http://wamuog.co.uk). She produces community film and media and is currently PI on two Erasmus + European projects, one on diversity and digital storytelling (www. mysty.eu) and one on media literacy for refugee, asylum-seeking and migrant women (https://medlitproject.eu).

Gareth Heritage is completing his PhD at Leeds Beckett University, UK. A former high-school music teacher, Gareth is actively involved in music education, privately teaching guitar, bass, drums, sound production and music theory to students of all ages from his studio in S.E. England. An experienced examiner, Gareth examines music for Trinity College London and the International Baccalaureate, as well as A-Level sociology for OCR. Gareth holds a Masters’ of Music, a Postgraduate Diploma, two Postgraduate Certificates, Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) and is a Fellow of the London College of Music. An associate editor for the Journal of Metal Music Studies, Gareth has published research regarding ‘80s heavy metal’s neo-classical aesthetic and the concept of alternative-hypermasculinity in the aesthetics of 1980s heavy metal.

Samantha Holland is Senior Research Fellow at Leeds Beckett University, UK. Her research interests are gender, ageing, leisure, popular culture and non-mainstream subcultures, utilizing feminist, ethnographic qualitative methods. Her publications include Alternative femininities. body, age and identity (Berg, 2004), Remote relationships in a small world (Peter Lang, 2008, edited), Pole dancing, empowerment and embodiment (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) and Vintage homes and leisure lives: Ghosts and glamour (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

Kay Inckle is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Liverpool, UK, specializing in the sociology of health and medicine. Her research interests include embodiment and body practices, disability, self-injury, gender and sexuality and user-led and creative research methods and ethics. These interests are informed by her own life and work (mostly) outside academia and her desire for research and education which promotes radical social change. Her most recent book was conceived as one small step in this direction: Safe with self-Injury: A practical guide to understanding, responding and harm-reduction (PCCS Books).

Charlotte Naylor Davis is Visiting Lecturer in Theology at Fordham University, USA, teaching the history of interpretation of the Bible. Her PhD developed a new methodology for the criticism of translations of ancient texts with respect to identifying language, culture and ideology. Her research focuses on the Bible as a cultural artefact, particularly in the way that text interacts with language, art and music. She is particularly interested in changes of gender representation throughout the history of textual interpretation and language development. She has published on the use of the Bible by heavy metal artists in Modern heavy metal: Markets, practices and cultures.

Karl Spracklen is Professor of Music, Leisure and Culture at Leeds Beckett University, UK, where until recently he was Professor of Leisure Studies. He was the Chair of the Leisure Studies Association, and is currently Secretary of Research Committee 13 (Sociology of Leisure) of the International Sociological Association. He is the Principal Editor of Metal music studies. He has researched and published extensively on leisure theory and in sociology of music, leisure and culture: by the 2018 he will have over one hundred publications. His latest book is The Palgrave handbook of leisure theory (Palgrave, 2017), edited with Brett Lashua, Erin Sharpe and Spencer Swain.

Beverly Yuen Thompson is Chair and Associate Professor of Sociology at Siena College, in Loudonville, New York, USA, where she teaches in the areas of deviance and subcultures. Her book, Covered in ink: Tattoos, women and the politics of the body, was published by New York University Press in 2015. She earned her PhD and MA in Sociology from The New School in New York City.

Laura Way is a PhD candidate with the University of Leicester, UK. Her research explores older women punks’ articulation and maintenance of a punk identity through qualitative interviewing and participant-created ‘zine pages. Laura’s research interests also include alternative (or, specifically, punk) pedagogies and creative research methods. She is a steering group member of the Punk Scholars Network, advisory board member of Punk and Post Punk, and currently a associate tutor at Bishop Grosseteste University.

M. Katharina Wiedlack is currently Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Department of English and American Studies, Europa-Universität Flensburg. Previously she was Post-Doc Fellow at the Department of English and American Studies, University of Vienna and Visiting Professor at the Center for Advanced Media Studies, Johns Hopkins University. She did research at the University of California, Berkeley, the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia at New York University and taught at Lomonossow University Moscow, State University St. Petersburg, and the University of Vienna, among others. She was Project Coordinator at the Gender Research Office at the University of Vienna from April 2008 to September 2015. Her research fields are primarily queer and feminist theory, popular culture, postsocialist, decolonial and disability studies. Currently, she is working on a research project focused on the construction of Russia’s most vulnerable citizens within Western media.

Therèsa M. Winge is an Associate Professor in Apparel and Textile Design, in the Art, Art History, and Design department at Michigan State University, USA. Her research also focuses on subcultural dress for its meanings and construction of identity. Common throughout her research, she examines the construction and deconstruction of visual and material cultures for the unique representations and sociocultural meanings within subcultural dress and styles. Her first book - Body Style – is about subcultural dress and body modifications; and, her second book – Costuming Cosplay – introduces the Cosplay subculture and costumes.

M. Selim Yavuz is a PhD student and part-time lecturer at Leeds Beckett University, UK. Coming from a musicological background, his current research focuses on the genealogy of death/doom metal music networks in northern England and on situating these fringe musical spaces in related larger cultural groups such as doom metal and extreme metal, having previously written dissertations about John Dowland and Elizabethan social structures, and death and suicide ideas in depressive suicidal black metal music. He is also the Editorial Assistant of the journal Metal Music Studies and Communications Officer of International Society for Metal Music Studies.