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- Volume 6, Issue 2, 2017
Punk & Post-Punk - Volume 6, Issue 2, 2017
Volume 6, Issue 2, 2017
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Punk and the city: A history of punk in Bandung
More LessPunk in Indonesia has often been described as a spectacular performance of disorder and resistance, a youthful style that posed a disruptive challenge to the authoritarian hierarchy and discipline of the New Order regime. The punk scene in Bandung has developed in the context of what is often referred to as ‘post-authoritarian’ Indonesia. Punk gives another historical narrative of the development of urban communities, and, while remaining a minority, is highly visible among urban Indonesian youth lifestyles. This article describes the history of punk’s growth and development in Bandung, traced through its relationship to space and place, and through the variety of artefacts it produces such as zines, cassettes and posters. This production and consumption is informed by punk’s traditional DIY ethos, and forms the basis for transnational cultural and political relationships.
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A.C.A.B.: Studying up the rule of law in Banda Aceh, Indonesia
Authors: Marjaana Jauhola and Yudi BolongThis article examines the case of the arrest of several punks in Banda Aceh in November 2013, known as the ‘Rex incident’, and the criminal proceedings that followed it. It is a textual continuation of an urban ethnography conducted in the city of Banda Aceh, Indonesia, between 2012 and 2016, conducted in the aftermath of major punk and metal concert arrests and re-education in December 2011 that led to high-profile international punk solidarity campaigns and media attention. The article draws attention to more mundane experiences of structural and physical violence and the obstacles, resourcefulness and ways of coping after the height of the global punk solidarity campaign of 2012 had passed. Drawing attention to silences in global solidarity efforts and the local media when the ‘Shari’a morality vs the right to be punk’ issue is not in focus, the article challenges such binaries, arguing that they hinder understanding of the everyday experience of punk, and overlook the wider misuse of state power, violations of rule of law, and the violent political economy in the post-conflict context of Aceh. Thus, it is argued that the punks in Aceh are constantly studying the hierarchies and relations of power through their embodied and gendered existence in the city. Attention to their everyday experience draws attention to their active negotiation of space and agency within such hierarchies.
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‘Life in the positive way’: Indonesian straight edge and the limits of lifestyle politics
More LessIn this article I examine the contested and equivocal role of ‘straight edge’ as a subcultural identity and lifestyle practice within the Indonesian DIY hardcore punk scene. Associated with a personal commitment to abstain from alcohol and drug use, straight edge was also understood by many in the Indonesian scene as a ‘positive punk’ movement for both self-transformation and progressive social change, reclaiming an authentic punk philosophy of autonomy and community from the ‘negative’ performance of transgressive rebellion. However, as the scene became entangled in both neo-liberal processes of commercialization and a resurgence of Islamic conservatism, many of those committed to positive punk began to question the role of straight edge and its relationship to DIY production as an anti-capitalist creative practice. Through a critical assessment of the lifestyle politics of straight edge in the Indonesian scene, I explore the potentials and limits of subcultural identity practices for emancipatory politics. Entangled in contradictory discourses and practices of collective identity, personal choice, subcultural authenticity, and anti-capitalist activism, straight edge both helped to cohere a distinct anti-capitalist DIY hardcore current within the Indonesian punk scene and constrained the political potential of DIY practices within a framework of subcultural identity and lifestyle. I situate this specific history of straight edge in the Indonesian scene within a broader analysis of the contradiction within DIY punk between building positive personal and social alternatives and critically negating existing modes of identification and sociality.
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‘Nevermind the jahiliyyah, here’s the hijrahs’: Punk and the religious turn in the contemporary Indonesian underground scene
More LessLike the country itself, the Indonesian punk/underground scene is rich with the diversity of its members. It was once known for its radical Left activism against the authoritarian state of the New Order (1966–98) in the late 1990s, but following political change in 1998 and the subsequent period of Reformasi, the image of the Indonesian punk/underground scene has gone through a shift. Its intersection with religious conservatism following the fall of the New Order creates a perception that Indonesian punk has become susceptible to what some people call ‘Islamic fundamentalism’. This is reinforced by the emergence of religious underground collectives and hijrah groups that work on Islamic proselytization in the scene. This article examines the state of the Indonesian punk/underground scene following the decline of punk’s Left activism, the expansion of neo-liberal capitalism, and the rise of religious conservatism in post-authoritarian Indonesia. This article suggests that the birth of religious underground collectives and hijrah groups within the underground music scene is a result of the absence of a coherent political Left within the subculture and the high financial and social cost of maintaining underground culture and ideology.
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Researching ‘Punk Indonesia’: Notes towards a non-exploitative insider methodology
By Jim DonagheyResearching punk from an insider perspective throws up important challenges, and in the context of Indonesia these issues are further complicated and intensified. This article draws on the author’s experience of, and reflections on, the process of researching ‘punk Indonesia’, augmented with reflective contributions from nine other social theorists, ethnographers and anthropologists, to suggest a research methodology that is dialogical and non-exploitative while remaining rigorous, analytical and critical. The academy’s relationship to punk has often been identified as intrusive and exploitative – and with good reason – but it is argued here that academic research into punk can be included within punk’s own tradition of self-critique, especially when that research emerges from insider perspectives. The lessons learned from insider perspectives may also be mapped effectively onto outsider approaches. A non-exploitative methodology is concerned with both research processes and research outputs, and these two aspects are closely entwined. Anarchist epistemological concerns are taken on board, along with engagements with Orientalism and Grounded Theory Method, to develop an approach that gives voice to the punks, involving them in a dialogical research process and creating research outputs that are useful to the scenes, cultures and movements that are being researched, while maintaining a high level of academic rigour, analysis and critique.
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Book Reviews
Authors: Kirsty Lohman and Kirby PringleA European Youth Revolt: European Perspectives on Youth Protest and Social Movements in the 1980s, Knud Andresen and Bart van der Steen (eds) (2016) Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 277 pp., ISBN: 9781137565709, h/bk, £63.00
Punk and Revolution: Seven more Interpretations of Peruvian Reality, Shane Greene (2016) Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 248 pp., ISBN: 9780822362746, p/bk, £19.00
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Gig Reviews
Authors: Mike Dines and Paul MegoBearded Theory Spring Gathering, Convoy Cabaret Stage, Catton Park, Derbyshire, 25–28 MAY 2017
Memphis Punk Fest 5, Memphis, Tennessee, 1–4 JUNE 2017
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