Abstract
In the long summer holiday of 1994, I formed a band with three friends. We couldn’t play our instruments. One of us knew a few chords and she taught those to the other guitarist. At our first gig I couldn’t hold the strings down on my bass. Arguably, the reason we felt equipped to form a band despite this lack of musical chops had a lot to do with punk, as filtered down through the riot grrl movement of the 1990s. This punk ethos is perhaps best encapsulated in the cartoon from the Sniffin Glue fanzine that showed diagrams of chords A, E and G on a guitar with the words ‘This is a chord, this is another, this is a third, now form a band’ (see p. 20). Punk Sociology is a call for such boldness among sociologists in order to reinvigorate the discipline.
The book’s central argument is that ‘the attitude and sensibility of punk can product-ively be used to regenerate and energize the sociological imagination’ (p. 4). In setting out the need for punk sociology, Beer describes the recent calls that have been made for a more creative sociology (including ‘live sociology’, ‘inventive sociology’) and argues that there hasn’t been adequate discussion of what this invigorated and more engaged form of sociology would look like. Beer sets about doing this by outlining the attributes that, for him, characterize the punk attitude; DIY ethic, the breakdown of barriers between audience and band, and open-ness to other music. He then goes on to show how these could be useful for sociology. When considering this it occurs to me that, arguably, feminism has been doing punk sociology for a very long time. And also, that some of the differences within punk’s history are being rather smoothed over. However, this does not detract from the book’s overall proposition, which is a valuable one.
Just as punk emerged in part as a rebellion against forms of guitar virtuosity, and downright showing off that characterized prog music, so Beer sets up punk sociology against its opposite ‘prog sociology’, a sociology that seeks to self-consciously demonstrate its own cleverness. Beer’s vision for punk sociology is ‘raw, stripped, back and fearless’. Doing punk sociology involves risk. It might mean sharing an unpolished piece of work with colleagues, it might mean experimenting with different forms of communication in order to engage with a wider audience. This introduces a discussion about what kinds of writing might be used by punk sociologists. What would our Sniffin Glue look like? Beer advocates moving beyond our comfortable modes of communication, particularly foregrounding the potential of social media and digital sociology, or using traditional formats such as the book and journal article but in subversive ways. Punk sociology also challenges existing forms of organization and assembly. In a time when academic labour is often precarious or badly paid, there is growing discontent with expensive major conferences. What might a punk sociology conference or event look like?
Beer’s vision is at once exhilarating and exhausting: ‘One day the punk sociologist is writing a blog post, the next they are working on an audio podcast, the next they are creating posters, the next they are making short films’ (p. 50). How to fit in the poster-making, alongside the teaching, the admin and being ready for the next REF, you may ask? But perhaps it is easier to be facetious about this challenge than to properly re-examine what we do as sociologists and why we are doing it. One of the book’s boldest sections deals with the comfort of pigeonholes: ‘We are trained to make sociological wallpaper. We are trained to find ways to blend ourselves into existing established debates . . . We are trained to find a pigeonhole . . . for our work and stick with it’ (p. 54). The responsive and mobile sociology that Beer calls for involves taking risks and the possibility of falling on one’s face, but surely better to do that than become irrelevant in a comfy pigeonhole.
From the introduction it is evident this is not going to be a snarling, spitting Sex Pistols of a book but more of a gentle wake up call, or poke in the ribs, for Sociology. This welcome intervention is too cautious and open ended to be called a manifesto – at times the book seems to argue with its own mild-manneredness, ‘Punk often looked to actively undermine hierarchies, challenge complacency, and upset received wisdom. This might be a bit extreme for sociology, hopefully not, but perhaps at least a gentle and knowing iconoclasm might still be of value’ (p. 42) – but the book is all the better for it. After all, this is a call for an eclectic sociology; a call for conversation and participation, rather than an overly didactic frontman of a book.