‘I Sometimes Wonder Whether I’m an Outsider’: Negotiating Belonging in Zine Subculture

Introduction

Zines are independent, not-for-profit publications that contain articles, anecdotes and artwork covering a variety of topics. They are predominantly circulated via subcultural networks and represent a convenient way to exchange information within these contexts. Zines, which is a contraction of ‘fanzine’ (Vale, 1997), are the subject of an emerging field of scholarship that seeks to explore their positionality within a variety of cultural, social and media contexts. Scholars are beginning to view the creation and distribution of zines as a collective subcultural practice (Duncombe, 2008), defined as a population of people who are invested in the zine as a political statement, and as a personal mode of expression.

Zine subculture is situated within the broader milieu of social practices referred to here as DIY (do-it-yourself) subcultures. ‘DIY’ refers not only to a networked practice of exchanging self-produced cultural artefacts, but also to an emerging mode of collective identification for many people invested in the idea and practice of autonomous cultural production. As illustrated here, the creation of zines, and the subculture (often occupied by disparately located people) that surround them, presents an appropriate case study through which to explore how contemporary subcultural networks are negotiated.

Drawing upon empirical work on the phenomenon of zinefests (radical marketplaces that facilitate the exchange of zines), this article argues that ‘successful’ participation at zinefests, and within DIY subculture more widely, requires the development of agreed upon ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ statuses and behaviours. Its primary objective is to explore how the changing character of contemporary subcultural environments becomes constituted through shifting experiences of ‘place’, and how this shift has impacted the ways subcultural participants negotiate ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ identities. However, the article also argues that zine creators’ spatial proximity to the geographical ‘centres’ of zine subculture is not the only variable that denotes how involved and connected to the subculture one may feel, and that, in fact, those who experience a strong alignment with DIY ethics and lifestyle practices appear to cultivate an ‘insider’ identity that is not based upon spatial proximity.

Subcultures and Place

Traditional conceptualisations of subculture (many that have emerged from within, and as a reaction to, the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) work conducted in the 1970s in the UK) define the subculture as a set of counter-hegemonic practices (see Hall and Jefferson, 1998 [1975]; Hebdige, 1979; McRobbie and Garber, 1997 [1975]; Willis, 1977). Although the CCCS perspectives were more varied than is often acknowledged by critiques of the centre, emphasis on the collectivised aspects of youth cultural participation prevails as a dominant theme of the centre’s work. More recently, the assumption that CCCS characterisations of subculture hinge upon a rigid mode of collectivity has led some scholars to suggest that the concept of ‘subculture’ is unhelpful and should be discarded (Bennett, 1999; Hesmondhalgh, 2005; Jenks, 2005; Laughey, 2006; Muggleton and Weinzierl, 2003). However, a recently emerging body of scholarship offers a more flexible understanding of how subcultures, as social and cultural practices, are evolving. This scholarship reworks the concept of subculture in light of shifting communication practices that have altered the ways in which people now negotiate sociability.

For example, Hodkinson (2004b) introduces ‘subcultural substance’, a concept that provides an important framework for understanding the unities and consistencies within contemporary subcultural formations (which cannot be explained by post-subcultural theorisation). In relation to the Goth subculture, Hodkinson (2002) notes a strong sense of collective identity that is played out through the stylistic practices, behaviours and values of Goths. The relevance of Hodkinson’s theory to this study lies within his recognition that collective identity does not mean that all of the participants within the Goth subculture experience, or express, their Goth identities in the same way, but that they feel an affinity to the substantive aesthetic and behavioural practices of the subculture. This approach gives appropriate grounding to the idea of subcultures as unified (but internally heterogeneous) sites of cultural expression and sociability.

Therefore within this article, subcultures are taken to mean internally diversified groups of people who feel an affinity with a specific cultural practice or belief. These types of social formation are negotiated around the channels of communication open to, and convenient for, their participants, meaning that subcultural connections take on a different shape throughout different cultural and geographical contexts. For Robards and Bennett (2011), for instance, internet participation on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace reflect a neo-tribal quality (see Bennett, 1999), rather than constituting consistent participation within any one subcultural context. Their empirical reflections lead them to conclude that social networking sites provide the individual with the means to explore various modes of sociability that are geared towards enhancing existing youth networks, rather than supporting a desire to meet new people (hence social media in this instance facilitate already formed communities, rather than the search for new ones). This point has particular relevance for the study of subcultures that appear to utilise the internet to strengthen communities that are already in existence, and this is especially salient within DIY spaces that organise via a variety of media. Studies such as this contribute an understanding of how people facilitate their ‘offline’ lives through engagement with social networking sites. Use of the internet by subcultural participants has created a shift in the way such groups organise themselves and, therefore, the way in which they are researched.

In this way, subcultures now develop around a complex set of interactional possibilities that broadly point towards a new form of ‘trans-local’ collectivity (Hodkinson, 2002, 2004a; Ma, 2002; Ueno, 2003). Research into the trans-local character of contemporary subcultural environments has involved in-depth engagement with how concentrated local spaces are able to interact with other local spaces (Ma, 2002), and how these spaces negotiate, and mutually inform, disparate subcultures. There is limited knowledge about how the participants who interact within such spaces negotiate insider and outsider identities, and how these identities become constituted by the participants’ experiences of place. However, several scholars have examined the influence of spatial negotiations on the organisation, and internal hierarchies, of subculture (see Leonard, 1998; Shildrick and MacDonald, 2006), and have concluded that structural inequalities (within, and between, subcultural environments) contribute to the ways in which individuals are able to interact with, and negotiate, these spaces. This article takes this notion further by suggesting that because variables of place, engagements with modes of communication and structural inequality are in a constant state of flux, the experience of ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ statuses in relation to subculture do not remain static, and are not necessarily consistently experienced at any given time.

In the first instance, this article argues that work from within the field of Social Geography that attempts to map the sociospatial characteristics of an array of social phenomena, provides an appropriate framework for understanding how the participants of subculture organise and negotiate space and belonging. For example, Lacey (2005), explores how the DIY movement in the UK is constituted through a shared adherence to DIY modes of living, and also through the development of a network of social centres, local activism and DIY leisure spaces. She suggests that DIY collectives are largely characterised by their use of space. Her approach makes it possible to retain the emphasis on the collective aspects of subculture, while acknowledging the different experiences people have of the same subculture within different geopolitical contexts. In this way, the field of subcultural studies is beginning to respond to the shifting experiences of place, meaning that the interrogation of how trans-local aspects of subcultures sustain their interconnections becomes central to our understanding of how subcultural participants experience ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ identifications within contemporary contexts.

An adjacent area of focus centres upon how researchers manage their own proximity to the dominant values and lifestyles of the subcultures they study, often noting the difficulties of identifying as a member of the subculture and also as a researcher (Hodkinson, 2005; McRae, 2007; Poletti, 2008; Thornton, 1995). This work asks questions about the implications of being an ‘insider’ or an ‘outsider’ in relation to the field under study. Less attention has been given to the internal hierarchies and negotiations occurring within subcultures themselves that result in the participants experiencing insider and outsider positions, at various times, and to various degrees, within ‘their own’ subcultures. However, Hodkinson’s (2011) recent study of ageing within the Goth subculture illustrates the existence of peripheries within subcultures themselves, presenting an understanding of ‘insider’ statuses within subcultural contexts as characteristically uneven. The remainder of this article seeks to interrogate the ways in which subcultural participants negotiate such identities within the context of zine subculture, and whether new configurations of place are contributing to this process.

Methodology and Methods

This study draws upon empirical research into zine subculture in the UK context. The objective of the study is to characterise zine subculture in terms of its aesthetics, social practices and dominant values. Twenty-nine zine and distro (zine distributers) creators were interviewed in total between October 2009 and July 2011 (the majority were interviewed face-to-face, and in context at zine events such as zinefests, but five were interviewed online because face-to-face interviews were not possible at the time with these participants). The participants ranged in age from 20 to 41, and represent a specific demographic within zine subculture, being predominantly white and female-identified. It should also be noted that all of the participants identified positively with feminism (in a variety of, often contradicting, ways). While not forming a central arena of discussion within this article, the feminist identities of the participants almost certainly shaped their negotiations of zine subculture, and their wider cultural investments; although, again, these investments are diverse in character and motivation. Therefore, the central objective of this article is not to characterise the practice of creating feminist zines per se (an endeavour evidenced by the work of Chidgey, 2006; Piepmeier, 2009; Zobl, 2009), but to explore these zine creators’ negotiation of wider zine subculture in relation to the development of ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ statuses.

Throughout the research period six zinefests were attended: Brighton Zinefest 2010; Women’s Library Zinefest 2010; Bradford Zine Fayre 2010; Brighton Zinefest 2011; London Zine Symposium 2011 and Women’s Library Zinefest 2011. Notes were made while in attendance at the zinefests, and participants were sometimes approached in person, and sometimes via email. This aspect of the research impacts the content of the data generated because people agreeing to participate in face-to-face interviews were often involved in the organisation of zinefests, or internet distros, and so had a sense of individual citizenship within the subculture. However, these people also negotiate ‘outsider’ complexes in certain circumstances, making their specific experiences of the subculture an interesting point of focus here. Evidently, there are members of the subculture who do not participate in zinefests and who prefer to access the subculture ‘from the periphery’ in internet forums and via ‘snail mail’, and they are also represented within this research.

The face-to-face interviews acted as a link to the regional aspects of the zine subculture. However, as this study highlights, many people negotiate marginal positions, which affect the way they make sense of their own participation within this space. This may also make them hesitant to take part in research for fear that they do not represent an ‘authentic’ enough perspective. The participants were, therefore, readily involved in zinefests and may constitute the more active inhabitants of this subculture. Many of the zine creators interviewed face-to-face kept in touch via email and sent me new zines they made. They also sent further comments via email as they thought of them.

It should be noted that the majority of the participants also recognised the importance of internet forums and internet-based communication to the construction of zine subculture, and it is without a doubt that the face-to-face aspects of the subculture are facilitated by this online activity. However, the remainder of this article will focus on how the participants negotiated these face-to-face encounters, rather than providing an in-depth account of the online dimension of the subculture.

Creating a DIY Environment: The Spatial Organisation of the Zinefest

Zinefests are usually held in social centres, and can be located within the subcultures that develop around political squats and independent DIY communities. For example, the programme for London Zine Symposium (LZS) 2011 contained a short article connecting zine distribution to squatting culture:

The first London Zine Symposiums were held in squatted social centres and probably wouldn’t have been possible had it not been for the opportunity of using such large, free spaces in Central London although the event has now found home in the Rag Factory, we have not lost our squatting roots.

Squatting is defined as the sustained or temporary illegal (in the UK context) ¹ occupation of an empty building without the express consent of the owner. Some scholarly work has sought to challenge the negative misconceptions of squatting networks, and to re-imagine them as places of social empowerment (Chatterton, 2002; Lacey, 2005; Pruijt, 2003), emphasising the importance of mapping ‘radical’ histories in order to document the sociospatial negotiations made by counter-political groups. Radical squatting forms part of the milieu of DIY subcultures, and as such is recognised as a ‘valuable’ practice within zine subculture.

In their study focusing on DIY culture, Purdue et al. (1997: 660) argue that music festivals occupy social space in similarly radical ways: ‘A festival can be thought of as a temporary autonomous zone where the symbolic frameworks of everyday life are suspended.’ Zinefests signify a similar form of ‘autonomous zone’ and the zinefests attended for this research embodied a particular aesthetic ‘style’, which represents the ‘DIY aesthetic’. At all of the zinefests attended, the organisers chose to decorate the interior, and exterior, of the buildings with posters, flyers and zine art, constructing a specific type of ‘DIY’ setting.

The prominence of this aesthetic at zinefests creates a juxtaposition to the immediate surroundings that was evident within this research when approaching the buildings. Likewise, the workshops and stalls that make up zinefests usually centre upon a DIY ethic that does not appear to translate ‘outside’ of that space. Zinefests therefore resemble Purdue et al.’s (1997) idea of a suspension of everyday ‘mainstream’ practices, to which the chosen aesthetics of zinefests contribute significantly. However, zinefests often negotiate their physical presence within ‘mainstream’ locations, such as city centres and town high streets. On the surface, it may appear that zinefests succeed in creating radical ‘utopias’. However, the romanticising of such spaces tends to overshadow a more complex interrogation of the internal negotiations that characterise them.

Zinefests resemble marketplaces in that they are set up with tables in rows, or in a square around the edge of the room, with the zine or distro creators standing behind the tables and the visitors, or ‘consumers’ walking around the space looking at the stalls, purchasing zines and talking to the stallholders. This aspect of zinefests draws a distinction between the ‘creators’ and the ‘readers’, meaning that although these roles are not viewed as a hierarchy of practices as such, they do occupy different positions within this space. The workshops that take place at zinefests are either incorporated into the space where the stalls are positioned, or they are sectioned off in other rooms. This is largely dependent upon the structure of the particular zinefest, and represents the integration of zine subculture within the wider context of DIY subcultural organising.

The Geography of Zine Subculture

In The Spatial Turn, Warf and Arias (2009: 37) discuss how the connections between place and cultural resistance are often infused with linguistic symbolism, noting that: ‘The development of global resistance movements have been filled with an expansive spatial imagery and vocabulary.’ Many of the zine creators interviewed as part of this research evoke such spatial metaphors to explain their own positionality within zine subculture:

I think I remain on the fringes of things somewhat … I grew up just outside [a city in Northern Ireland] and was kind of ‘alternative’ and didn’t feel like there were many people like me in the immediate area, so when I discovered zines there was no question about it, I had to make my own at once. It was about connecting with people … I guess I wanted to know other people who were kind of lefty, into indie music, etc. (Anne, interviewed online in June 2010)

Maybe [I am] not a ‘central’ member as I don’t go to many zine events (due to living so far away from them and also being shy) but I do feel I’m connected with other writers, and readers. (Teresa, interviewed online in July 2010)

These zine creators report a direct connection between ‘place’ and their own positionality within zine subculture. Specifically, Anne’s sense of ‘remaining on the fringes’ creates the image of a zine subculture that has geographical centres and peripheries. Amy connects her feelings of exclusion from alternative communities to her distanced geographical proximity to large cities in the UK. The insinuation here is that, were Amy to live in one of these cities, she would experience a higher level of connection to the communities with which she identifies. The suggestion here is that connections made online do not provide an adequate substitute for her. Amy suspects that she might be an ‘outsider’ because of her removed proximity from London or Leeds, meaning that geography in itself can affect how authentically a person can interact within subculture. This point reveals a common perspective among peripherally located zine creators. James and Natalie moved to South London several years ago in search of queer and punk subcultural interaction after previously living in ‘removed’ geographical locations that prohibited them from participating fully in DIY culture. James comments,

I think we lived in really far out provincial places, and didn’t really have … oh well Natalie more so than me, but not like access to seeing bands or being involved in any sort of like DIY community or any of that … but both of us were just so interested in all of that stuff that it’s like that desire to partake somehow, or desire to be involved. And the only way that it seemed to be that we could do that was through making a paper zine. But I mean certainly in [a small town in the UK where James and Natalie lived previously] they didn’t exist. (James, interviewed in May 2010)

James and Natalie were able to forge connections to a zine subculture that was present in a large city in the UK (the place where they eventually relocated permanently). This point reveals the importance placed on local subcultural involvement by peripherally located zine creators, many who have travelled internationally in search of such DIY communities. However, zine subculture is far from being an insular space, and is evidently characterised by its international connections. For example, zines from various countries worldwide (although predominantly the USA, Canada, Australasia, Western Europe and Eastern Europe) infiltrate zine subculture in the UK and are sold alongside the zines created by UK zine creators. This infiltration is made possible when zine creators and readers order zines from international distros and when zine creators bring zines over to the UK with them when they travel or relocate there. Hayley, who ran a distro in a country in Australasia before moving to the UK, decided to bring zines from New Zealand over with her to sell at zine events in the UK:

Often you go to the symposiums [in the UK] and you see a lot of duplicate zines between distros and I thought ‘well OK, there’s no point in me distroing UK zines because they’re everywhere. I may as well bring stuff from Australasia over which people probably haven’t had exposure to’. In [the country in which she previously lived] … mostly we sell American and European comics and zines, and we had quite a small selection of [the country in which she previously lived] produced zines. But since I’ve been here, obviously I couldn’t bring a lot of the stuff with me, so I took a few Australian and New Zealand zines that we had, single copies … I just copy them for different festivals, and it’s growing because my friend sends me over new ones. (Hayley, interviewed in May 2010)

The zines Hayley brought over with her are now integrated into UK zine culture, and contribute to its characterisation. Her motivation for bringing over zines from [the country in which she previously lived] is to integrate ‘things people haven’t had exposure to’ into zine subculture in the UK. This act contributes to the eclecticism of the zines found within the subculture. Thus, trans-local aspects of the subculture are evidenced through the organisation of zinefests, and facilitated by online modes of connectivity.

Aragon (2008) claims that the internet supports ‘alternative’ communities to create spatially dispersed connections, and this research reveals that the internet is utilised in a similar way within zine subculture, connecting individuals who do not live within locally accessible subcultures. The organisers of zinefests also rely on the internet for the promotion of zinefests and zine symposiums, and distros are primarily run via the internet:

I think Facebook, Twitter, and We Make Zines (social networking sites) have all played an important part in keeping the British zine community alive, as it allows us to keep in touch … with each other easily, let each other know about our new zine releases and submission calls, talk about issues in the zine community … and become closer to each other. (Jennifer, interviewed online in April 2011)

Some individuals who are geographically removed from local communities appear more likely than people immersed in the ‘centres’ of the zine subculture to manage their physical absence by seeking interpersonal connections via the internet. Kathy discusses the importance of the internet to DIY-invested individuals who live in ‘peripheral’ locations:

Well I think if I was still in [the country in which she used to live] it would be really important because, you know, when you’re geographically removed, it’s like a way of being included in things that are happening in other countries and I think that’s really important and I think it’s kind of an arrogant thing. It would be an arrogant thing for me to say because I’m right in the middle of it in [a large city in the UK], you know, I can come to the zine library and the infoshop and go to all the punk gigs coz I’m part of the underground, and I know that if you’re trying to find it and you can’t find it, you know it’s that idea about accessibility. (Kathy, interviewed in January 2010)

This account highlights the importance of the internet in connecting trans-local aspects of zine subculture. Kathy’s reference to the ‘underground’ alludes to her perception of her own ‘insider’ status within the subculture and the way in which this grants her the opportunity to interact on a local level. This further supports the argument put forward in this article that there is a preference for local interactions over online communication within zine subculture in the UK, and that the online interactions that occur are either in the vein of organising face-to-face events or to compensate for the disparate characterisation of the subculture. Although evidently zine subculture in the UK context is characterised by diversity, and by its trans-local, assemblage, it became apparent that participants of this subculture are invested in the development of a set of shared values. These values include perceptions of censorship, the economics of zine exchange and the extent to which they embody ‘alternative’ identities.

As mentioned earlier, contemporary engagements with subculture face the challenge of showing how such a theory of youth cultural participation can adapt to people’s changing communication habits. Mary lives in a large city in the UK in a feminist activist household and is part of a local DIY feminist collective that has organised several zinefests and created several zines. She explains how zinefests provide an opportunity to meet zine creators living further afield and to ‘be involved’ directly in zine subculture: ‘There’s a sense of shared purpose, which is then amplified when you have events like zine[fests]. And when you are in that place together you do feel more like something’s happening: people come together’ (Mary, interviewed in March 2011). Therefore, zinefests come to represent ‘highlights’ within zine subculture because they promote face-to-face interaction, which does not happen often within disparately located subcultures. Likewise, for Stacey, who lives a long distance away from the cities that host zinefests, the ability to travel to these events, and to interact with other zine creators face-to-face, is a reason to believe in the existence of a zine subculture: ‘I know that if I go to a zine related event I would be able to talk to people I have met through zine stuff. So yeah, I think that makes it a community, for me’ (Stacey, interviewed online in August 2010).

Although, as mentioned previously, the internet is utilised frequently by participants of zine subculture to connect with one another and to organise zine events, zinefests contribute a dimension to the subculture that many of the participants do not feel can be replicated online. James and Natalie organise an annual zinefest in a large city in the South of England. They consider this event to be an important point of connection for zine creators and describe how it brings together zine creators who live in disparate geographical locations:

Post-subcultural theorists may question the cohesiveness of such a disparately located subculture. However, the participants appear to value the subculture as a relatively consistent space.

Negotiating Insider and Outsider Identities

The varied ways in which people now access subcultural environments inspires questions about how successful the insider/outsider dichotomy is in representing contemporary subcultural participation. It is evident that subcultures are predominantly constituted through the collective adherence to specific cultural practices, and for Williams (2012), an adherence to these practices enables the participant to develop an ‘authentic’ identity within such spaces. Therefore, an insider is someone who has had their ‘authentic’ or ‘legitimate’ status ratified within a particular subcultural space, and an ‘outsider’ is a person who is, in some way, associated with ‘mainstream’ or commercial values, or who has not ‘authenticated’ their identity within the subculture (Thornton, 1995). The participants invariably explain feeling that they are ‘insiders’ when their behaviour is aligned with the dominant values of the space. However, this dichotomy is disrupted when participants express feeling like ‘insiders’ within some contexts, and like ‘outsiders’ in others. The findings explored within this section indicate a ‘messier’ relationship to insider and outsider statuses than dominant understandings portray, with some participants experiencing different levels of connection to the subculture at different times.

This process is evident within the testimony of another participant, Jessica, who has achieved notoriety within zine subculture because she runs a prominent distro selling zines with a feminist and queer focus. The success of Jessica’s distro is dependent upon her continued presence at zinefests, where she sells zines from her distro in a face-to-face context. However, these encounters also produce, for Jessica, an ambiguous feeling about her own ‘insider’ status within a zine subculture that is heavily influenced by punk and anarchist values, and ‘deviant’ domestic practices, such as squatting:

I haven’t entered this crazy, underground … I don’t know, punk, anarchist … I don’t even understand it, I don’t fit in it … I go to places sometimes, like zine events, and they’re just full of people like that and I’m just like ‘I’m wearing Dorothy Perkins! … oh my goodness, they must hate me!’ I don’t fit in … so I haven’t adopted that sort of lifestyle … I think I’m a kind of mainstream … I feel like I kind of moonlight as an alternative sort of person. Most people can know me for ages and never know I run a distro. They’re like ‘that’s really cool. That’s really alternative’, and I’m just like ‘yeah …’ (Jessica, interviewed in October 2009)

Jessica’s distro has achieved notoriety within zine subculture as a trusted source for purchasing zines. She comments elsewhere in her interview that: ‘I loved that I could be someone in this world’, a point that appears to contradict her above admission that she feels somewhat out of place at zinefests. Jessica is demonstrating that she sometimes feels like an ‘insider’ and sometimes like an ‘outsider’ depending on the mode of communication she uses to interact with the subculture. However, this is not merely a case of ‘hiding behind the internet’ in order to possess confidence within this field. Jessica’s ambiguous relationship with zine subculture and squatting networks does not reflect a conflict of values, but instead highlights the importance of engaging with the multiplicity of entrance points into contemporary subcultural spaces. Although radical squatting is a valued practice within zine subculture, it is evident that not all of the participants feel able to partake in this lifestyle, even if they do express their support for the practice.

Another participant, Mel, who has been involved within zine subculture for a number of years, explains her own ambiguous relationship to punk and anarchist values and lifestyles:

anarchists quite often … like autonomous spaces … I guess it’s weird because I’m obviously a lot more bourgeois in the way that I live than those crowds, and I’m older as well, um … they are punk and they’ve been very welcoming to me and I guess I’ve been involved in earlier waves of people doing things like that because I’ve been around a long time. I don’t live that way myself because I don’t want to be evicted. And I don’t live in, yeah I suppose such a transient way, having roots is important to me and, yeah the politics as well, I suppose. (Mel, interviewed in May 2010)

In distancing herself from the ‘underground’ and ‘alternative’ aspects of zine subculture, Mel alludes to a ‘politics of authenticity’ whereby those who are fully integrated within squatting and punk subcultures come to represent ‘authentic’ and ‘central’ members of the subculture. She does not pursue the lifestyle of squatting because she ‘doesn’t want to get evicted’, demonstrating a certain adherence to dominant spatial and domestic structures. In commenting that ‘having roots is important to me’, she reveals her alignment with the common ‘outsider’ assumption of peripheral subcultural participation that squatters live transient existences that lack roots. This point illustrates that it is not merely geographical location that determines the participants’ positionality within the subculture, but also the extent to which they are willing to embrace a ‘DIY lifestyle’.

The ‘Zine Star’

As touched upon within the previous section, there appears, in contrast to the peripheral subjectivities that are produced through a feeling of disconnection from ‘anarchist’ values, an equally complex ‘insider/outsider’ negotiation for people who become notorious within zine subculture. Such people are referred to as ‘zine stars’, a phrase known by many of the participants. A zine star is a person who is well known within zine subculture for being highly prolific (producing a high volume of zines or running a prominent distro). Although they are well known within the subculture, zine stars are not necessarily the people at the ‘centre’ of the subculture and may even experience a sense of isolation:

I’ve been around for a while now and I’ve been producing stuff consistently because people have read my, some people have read my stuff and sometimes I get a nice surprise really that I’m known, because most of the time I’m here working and it’s quite a solitary existence, you know … I’ll go out and buy some sweets, I’ll go and see my friends or something in the evening, but I don’t have much of a sense of people consuming the stuff that I produce. So sometimes I do get to see that people have read it or that know about what I do or are interested, and yeah it’s kind of like a funny surprise really. Like being asked to do stuff out of the blue or being contacted by someone who wants to talk to me, you know, it’s lovely and it reminds me that, you know, this kind of deep need to be witnessed is actually happening, somehow, somewhere because of the stuff that I produce. (Mel, interviewed in May 2010)

Mel’s testimony further exemplifies the ability for zine creators to negotiate simultaneous insider and outsider statuses within the same subculture at the same time. Her involvement within zine subculture appears ‘central’ at first glance; however, she alludes to a feeling of disconnection from the subculture until she is contacted by someone who has an interest in her cultural production.

The relative ‘fame’ experienced by the zine star is not always perceived as positive within the subculture because it alludes to an underlying hierarchy that is not entirely compatible with the dominant values of the subculture. For instance, one participant, Amy, is considering publishing back issues of her zine as a book that she would sell via an established publication house. However, she is ambivalent about this possibility:

I want to not lose contact with the scene if I become more successful. I’m worried about selling anything because I’m worried I will lose the community that there is … because it [the community] is not based on capitalism, it’s based on trade and I will always trade my zine … and I get really pissed off with anyone that doesn’t. But I want to be able to earn a living from my artwork, if I can, because I want to support myself in my own industry and I don’t want to be part of a corporate thing and I don’t want to be a part of this administration’s policies and I don’t want to … I want to be able to earn my money from my writing and if being more commercial with my zine in some way, like writing a book about it, does that then that’s what I want to do, and I’m worried that I would alienate the scene that I guess exists actually. (Amy, interviewed in May 2010)

The central concern here is maintaining an interpersonal connection to zine subculture. There is the sense that should she become ‘more successful’ in terms of notoriety and finance Amy would compromise her current capital within the subculture because such measures of ‘success’ are inconsistent with the way in which value is constructed within this space. Furthermore, Amy is concerned that selling her zines as a published collection would be perceived by others within zine subculture as ‘selling out’; a concept also explored in the context of rave culture by Thornton (1995). In exploring how ‘selling out’ impacts upon an individual’s subcultural status, she argues that the ‘underground’ nature of rave music is what sustains its appeal for those invested within the wider rave subculture. For Thornton (1995) selling out is defined by the increasing visibility of a rave track in the mainstream music charts, indicated by the amount of radio play the track receives. The more visible the track is, the more distasteful it is for ravers:

Within club undergrounds, it seems to me that ‘to sell’ means ‘to betray’ and ‘selling out’ refers to the process by which artists or songs sell beyond their initial market, which, in turn, loses its sense of possession and familiar belonging. In other words, selling out means selling to outsiders. (Thornton, 1995: 124)

A comparison can be made here between the distastefulness of overly ‘visible’ rave tracks and the overly visible cultural production practices of the zine star; both of which pose a danger of ‘outsider’ status because of a perceived incongruence with the dominant values of these respective subcultures. Hierarchies and power imbalances are viewed as counter-productive within DIY contexts, such as zine subculture. However, the zine star status is evidently an ambiguous one, creating both ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ subject positions that may be experienced simultaneously by those who embody this subject position.

Conclusion

This article has explored how experiences of place influence the ways in which participants are able to negotiate the geographical centres and peripheries of zine subculture. However, it also contends that geography is not the only variable that determines an individual’s inhabitation of insider or outsider subject positions. In fact, as detailed above, several of the participants feel disconnected from the ‘central’ (both geographical and ideological) aspects of the subculture because of a perceived personal inadequacy in relation to the dominant values of DIY subcultures.

It is, however, apparent that in certain circumstances individuals are able to sustain both insider and outsider subjectivities within a given subcultural space, meaning that a broader conceptualisation of subculture that deals with the interrelations between the different dimensions of the space is needed. These plural and seemingly conflicting statuses do not appear to challenge the sense of collectivity of contemporary subcultural environments. Neither does it mean that the social identities of the participants are too eclectic to be defined within the remit of the subculture, because subcultural participants consistently communicate the importance of collective subculture pursuits to their own sense of selfhood.

This points to the need for subcultural studies to develop methodological approaches that are capable of capturing the multi-dimensional character of contemporary subcultural spaces. People’s points of entry into subcultures are now not only determined by their geographical proximity to the ‘centres’ of subcultural activity, but also to their access to the online dimensions of subculture, and their moral proximity to the ‘alternative’ values that characterise many subcultural spaces. As has been shown here, although the identity practices of subcultural participants may be influenced by varied cultural engagements, this need not detract from their consistent investments in subculture.