The Oxford Handbook of Punk Rock

No Future. Punk Is Dead. That is what they sang and said. Yet as we approach fifty years of punk rock, it still endures, and even thrives. From “White Riot” to Pussy Riot, Never Mind the Bollocks to Nevermind, DIY (Do It Yourself) to never gonna die(t), punk rock has marked or stained—it marks or stains—our musical and cultural history and practice. Here key established writers as well as emerging scholars from around the world offer critical views on punk practice and legacy, in a timely re-evaluation of its significance as music, culture, politics, nostalgia, and heritage. The handbook looks at pre- and proto-punk forms, the “high years” of circa 1976–1984, the international spread of the music and style, punk media from films to fanzines, as well as a thread that runs through its entire history—the inspiring politics of DIY. Crossing and blurring disciplinary boundaries, it presents methodological innovations to offer new ways of understanding punk’s significance. The Oxford Handbook of Punk Rock also identifies and explores some of punk’s core contradictions: its antiwar messages alongside its (often gendered) violence, its antiracism alongside its dominant whiteness, its energy and attitudinality as a youth culture for an aging demographic, and its intermittent but persistent flirtations with populism and nationalism.