Editors' Foreword to The Oxford Handbook of Punk Rock

Following an introductory chapter that offers a critical review of the development of punk scholarship over the decades, the book is structured in six sections that loosely group together sets of essays thematically. We do not want to overstress the structural integrity of these sections here, for it is in the spirit of interdisciplinary dialogue—punk’s untidy seams and productive bricolage—to expect chapters to speak or leak across, or even demolish, any borders we might set. The sections are most useful primarily as a way of handling our wealth of material. Part One contains chapters that invite readers to reconsider punk rock, both in terms of alternative critical and theoretical approaches, and in thinking about some of its significant pre-lives. (So: a hint of chronological rationale here.) Parts Two and Three look at the importance of punk in constructing versions of identity, including how those negotiate aging, as well as its liberatory and oppressive practices. With a set of geographical case studies, Part Four critically charts ways in which punk spaces have spread, provincially and internationally, the case studies being culturally and historically situated. Part Five looks at questions of punk’s wider cultural and media resonance. Finally, the chapters that form Part Six offer critical explorations of the sometimes uncomfortable shifting politics of punk across the decades, and how the music has played these out.