Doing Scene

Youth Culture as an Interactional Accomplishment

In the past forty years, studies of youth culture have taken a long path toward considering the shared meanings of participants, an “interpretivist” approach to youth culture. In the 1970s, researchers at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) understood these social worlds as “youth subcultures,” and they explained them as reactions to wider structural conditions—especially class position (Hall and Jefferson 1976). An overlapping approach considers the identity of subculture members, how members define themselves through markers of style, taste, and other “authentic” codes of style and knowledge (Brake 1985; Force 2009; Fox 1987; Hebdige 1979; Moore 2004; Thornton 1996; Widdicombe and Wooffitt 1995; Williams 2006). Given the voluntary yet zealous nature of many of these groups, researchers of identity construction find fertile ground when studying youth culture.

Both of these approaches privilege the extremes of macro and micro levels of analysis, neglecting the spaces where individual and collective meet. CCCS research disregarded the meanings and experiences of participants, instead putting theoretical constructs in their place (Fine and Kleinman 1979; Martin 2004; Muggleton 2000; Sherwood, Smith, and Alexander 1993). Scholarship on subcultural identity also downplays linkages among members. Studies of identity, often based on the method of interviews, tend to treat markers of membership and commitment as either reactions to broad social forces and/or as individual attributes that are “in the heads” or “on the bodies” of participants. Yet, identity also emerges from social contexts. For example, a relatively small and tight-knit network of people (forty-six people) was crucial to punk’s origins (Crossley 2008). Overall, subculture research tends to minimize the importance of settings where participants come together and interact, collectively constructing these social worlds (Fine and Kleinman 1979; Martin 2004; Muggleton 2000).

In response, studies of “scenes” understand these actors as situated in settings where they develop identities, beliefs, styles, practices, and artifacts (Bennett 2004; Bennett and Kahn-Harris 2004; Bennett and Peterson 2004; Blum 2002; Chaney 2004; Crossley 2008; Irwin 1977; O’Connor 2002; Shank 1994; Straw 1991, 2002). Although there is a literature that includes other categories (Blum 2002; Irwin 1977; Straw 2002), researchers focus on music-based scenes. They are heavily networked, interlinked, and evolving—connected with international developments. People from all over the globe unite in “trans-local” and global scenes (Bennett 2002a; Harris 2000; Hodkinson 2002; Kruse 1993). For example, Hodkinson (2002) found that the “goth” world is an international phenomenon linking networks of people, resources, and spaces through long-distance flows of products, people, and information. Other studies consider “virtual scenes” that occur primarily, or partly, on computers (Bennett 2002b; Kibby 2000). With the advent of the internet, people the world over can immediately interact with each other.

Simultaneously, a scene is a unique, local entity that transforms regional members into a community (Bennett 2002a; Hodkinson 2002; Shank 1994; Straw 1991, 2002). As Bennett (2002a, 224) argues,

A shared connection with a locally created musical style becomes a metaphor for community, a means through which people articulate their sense of togetherness through a particular juxtaposition of music, identity and place.

Scenes have a loose and fluid nature to them, overlapping and merging with other social worlds. They are intertwined with their surrounding environments, drawing from and influencing nearby (and not-so-nearby) events, especially music production (Kruse 1993) and efforts at social change (Leung and Kier 2008; Moore and Roberts 2009; Williams 2007; Zobl 2004). Yet, few local outposts of scenes continue for more than a short period of time (Blum 2002; Irwin 1977).

With this local focus, an advantage of the idea of a “scene” is that it locates activities in networks of people who are in actual times and places. This expands the monolithic and homogenous conceptualization of youth subcultures and their identities (Chaney 2004, 37; Muggleton 2000). Instead, studies of scenes consider how members connect with each other, and how those connections generate new identities, spaces, and forms of art and culture. “Scene … offers the possibility of examining musical life in its myriad forms, both production- and consumption-orientated, and the various, often locally specific ways in which these cross-cut each other” (Bennett 2002a, 226). Researchers define scenes through events, as voyeuristic and theatrical gatherings where people go to “see and be seen” (Blum 2002; Irwin 1977).

Current research tends to focus on local connections of scenes with broad, often international, contexts. While this emphasis is certainly important, it incongruently matches with theoretical calls to capture their interactional groundings and Weberian “verstehen” meaning making (Chaney 2004; Martin 2004; Muggleton 2000). Specifically, we do not know the micro-level processes by which members collectively come together and generate these settings through shared understandings. Such interpretive processes are important building blocks by which people originate, create, and manage social life as a whole (Blumer 1969; Garfinkel 1967; Mead 1934). Thus, Garfinkel (1967) argues that the social world is constantly in a state of becoming, where we are not set into definite roles and settings. Instead, reality is an accomplishment. We are constantly “doing” the social world—doing race (Moerman 1974), class (Scharff 2008), gender (West and Zimmerman 1987), and even doing punk (Widdicombe and Wooffitt 1995)—through our everyday activities.

Such a focus on the micro-level accomplishment of scenes has broader implications for understanding space, identity, and power within them. Researchers intertwine the study of youth culture with the study of space (Bennett 2000, 2004; Hetherington 1998; Massey 1998). They theorize space as a social construction, created and manipulated by people (Gieryn 2000; Harvey 1989; Tuan 1977). Thus, scene space, like all space, is not simply a static location or a “destination” where members meet. In addition, people construct their identities through the contexts that shape them, including the context of space (Gieryn 2000; Harvey 1989). The spaces of youth culture affect the identities of members (O’Connor 2002; Ruddick 1991). An effect of both spatial and identity construction is power differences (Calhoun 1994; Taylor 1989). Those with more power—bourgeoisie over proletariat, whites over minorities, and men over women—also have a greater ability to define themselves and their worlds. With the exception of studies of gender in subcultures (Leblanc 1999; McRobbie and Garber 1976; Taylor 2012), researchers are relatively quiet on issues of power within youth cultures.

Building on current conceptions of scenes, as well as addressing their limitations, in this study I will analyze how members of a punk scene in a small college town were “doing scene.” I will consider how participants constructed and sustained a scene through interaction with each other, mostly by manipulating its spatial building blocks, and I will examine how members shaped identities and relations of power through this spatial construction of reality.

Following a brief description of the setting, as well as the methods I used, I argue that participants engaged in three processes in order create and sustain a scene space. First, members established a space in a marginal area, using the loose social control of a neighborhood in order to hold loud events and parties. Second, they transformed the place into scene space by adding punk symbols, as well as holding punk events. Third, they managed the boundaries of the space, designating some areas of the house public space, some private space, and some areas as “scene” space. Participants built the scene on these important foundations; each process is key to explaining how this punk scene continued and thrived in this local setting. Furthermore, participants not only manipulated the space, but the space also manipulated them. This reflection of the space onto themselves shaped boundaries of insiders and outsiders. It also gave them various levels of authority.

Setting and Methods

In this article, I use data collected through ethnographic participant observation. I analyze a group of self-named “punks” in a Midwestern U.S. college town. I originally found my subjects through a flier stapled to a downtown wall. The flier announced a concert in a home’s basement. Calling the number on the flier, I spoke to someone named “Walter” (all names are pseudonyms). He gave me directions and introduced himself to me that night. This space was tentative and sporadic, making the scene also tentative and sporadic. At the concert, the last band to play (after driving from Florida as part of a tour) had their set cut short when a neighbor complained about the noise. Although I had previously considered ethnography on punk, doing so was problematic. There were just too few regular events to collect data reliably. The places where events did happen—in permissive parents’ homes, apartments, and other temporary spaces—made events rare, short-lived, and police and neighbor intervention often stopped them. Without a regular space, the scene faltered.

This fledgling scene was located in a small town (population roughly 80,000) that had a surprisingly large number of amenities. The city had a history of being liberal, bohemian, and even radical, especially given the surrounding area. A frequent participant in the punk scene commented to me that there was more going on culturally than in a nearby—and much larger—metropolitan area. The town especially contained many bars, clubs, concert halls, and other nightlife. This had much to do with the university, which year after year brought together thousands of students. This was a “college town.”

Within a month of its establishment, “The Pirate House”—a rental house in this city—became a central meeting place for punks from the town as well as the nearby metropolitan area. This opened up the opportunity to observe this scene as it formed at the house. A frequent participant there, I introduced the project at a potluck dinner, a gathering where the punks all brought a dish to share. The participants agreed to participate in the study, and I obtained permission from the IRB of the local university, where I was a graduate student.

My relationship with the field site involved a mixture of insider and outsider status. From the beginning, my knowledge about the punk world, including my ability to read the cultural codes for punk on that initial flier, contributed to my involvement in the research. I knew the language, ideologies, and styles of punk when entering this world. Still, in other ways I was an outsider. I was several years older than most participants were, and I was outside of the inner circle of members. Yet, I believe this “slight insider” status helped me achieve a nice balance of integration and distance in my data collection and analysis. I was simultaneously able to observe as a knowing insider while also embracing the distanced perspective of the outsider. In some cases, my outsider status actually helped me perceive patterns. As I describe below in the “Management” section, I began to notice power differences after the residents sanctioned me for doing the same activities that they had done.

I spent four months engaged in participant observation at the Pirate House and other places where these punks met, seeing bands frequently at concerts held there (or as they called them, “shows”), eating at weekly potlucks, writing up notes afterward, and analyzing the notes through the “grounded theory” method (Glaser and Strauss 1967). I coded the field notes several times, developing increasingly refined descriptive, analytical, and methodological categories. From there, I wrote up short “memos” in order to develop these patterns further, some of which I combined and expanded into the current analysis. This coding and memoing, done concurrently with data collection, informed my subsequent observations and analyses. For example, after I noticed that the residents were doing subtle social control in order to manage the house, I began to focus on these techniques.

I augmented this initial, intensive fieldwork and analysis with additional research. I continued occasional participant observation, going to shows and potlucks for eight more months. To broaden my understanding of the punk world, I also collected what Lofland et al. (2006) call “supplementary data”: fliers, a few zines, and a book that became a research aid (O’Hara 2001). I also borrowed records from Walter, and I regularly checked a local website where participants posted messages. About a year after the fieldwork ended, I collected email addresses and asked the people living at the Pirate House to answer a few questions about their background and the origin of the house. These informal interviews with the “Pirate Punks,” as people soon began calling them, gave me more context and history behind the formation of the Pirate House and other punk activities.

In my fieldnotes, I specifically (pseudo) name two dozen people, but at least ten times as many were at these events. Certain members were more central than others were. Walter, Mike, Kevin and Andy, who initially rented the house, were also very active in the events held there. These four “Pirate Punks” were its main residents (although a revolving population of travelers also spent a night or a week there on their way across the country). They were all about the same age, in their late teens. Two of them went to the university and two worked service jobs. In fact, most of the participants were college and high school students, roughly between the ages of 18 and 25, and most worked at low-paying service jobs, with or without also going to school. All four longtime friends, they got along well, often discussing how getting new roommates may disrupt these amiable dynamics.

Ethnically, almost everyone I saw at the Pirate House was white. Likewise, there was a uniformity of class, as just about everyone I asked identified themselves as “upper-middle class.” Additionally, as I will explain below, men controlled the space of this scene. A long-standing irony of punk is the lack of diversity in a social world that champions social justice. Although popular images of punk often relate a destructive, nihilistic phenomenon, from its origins participants have overwhelmingly championed “progressive,” Left-wing causes (O’Hara 2001). In 1970s Britain, many punk bands were involved in “Rock Against Racism” concerts (Manzoor 2008), and “anarcho-punk” branches trace back to the UK band Crass (Gosling 2004). In the 1990s, participants embraced radical feminism through “Riot Grrrl” (Rosenberg and Garofalo 1998). Yet, despite their ideals and activism, punk worlds tend to mirror the demographic mainstream that participants fervently claim to reject (Traber 2001).

A main limitation of this study is that by capturing micro-processes of the construction of the Pirate House, it neglects the larger contexts that influence scene spaces. The house was the main site of my observation, but as studies of scenes attest, it was only one node in a giant network of overlapping, collaborating, and conflicting worlds of youth culture—both locally and globally. The local scene overlapped with other scenes in the area, nationally, and internationally. Participants held a few concerts at a house in the nearby metropolitan area, and they held a few potlucks at an apartment there. Participants also connected this space with an international network of punk friends, performers, and manufacturers of various punk goods. There also were virtual online worlds where scene members were “doing scene” through shared activities and meanings. Participants at the Pirate House used, contributed to, interacted with, and at times competed with these local, extralocal, and virtual social worlds.

Establishment— Creating Marginal Space

As researchers contend, the spaces where scenes take place are important to the formation and continuation of youth culture. The choice of where to create punk space is not easy, as various forces converge to limit events. Local venues for live music focus on more established bands, and they frequently do not allow entrance to patrons under the drinking age. Landlords and other managers of space, the police, fire marshals, or local businesses and neighbors generally are not very happy with hundreds of youth and loud noise in “their” areas. A solution to this lack of resources is for members of youth cultures to create their own place, in the process transforming it from its intended function to one that fits their purposes (Hetherington 1998; Massey 1998). People hold punk shows in subway stations, in buses, in parks, makeshift clubs in office space, and at other non-traditional concert venues. Authorities often shut down these spaces.

The Pirate House emerged as a precarious punk space. An older, four-bedroom home built for a family, it was an unlikely choice for a punk scene. Yet, it was set in an environment that would tolerate this use of the space. Located in the heart of town, an area colorfully referred to as the “student ghetto,” this was a setting that attracted both foot and automobile traffic by being both on a busy street and about three blocks from the local university. The student ghetto was a very noisy, active area, filled with loud, late night parties and almost constant traffic. This created a buffer of clamor and tolerant neighbors, landlords, and police that was crucial for the Pirate House and the events there (Walter told me that even their landlord referred to the residence as “a party house”). Political, economic, and cultural conditions of urban areas funnel art and music scenes into certain “bohemian” areas of the United States (Shank 1994) and certain areas of cities (Lloyd 2006). The student ghetto was fertile ground for growing such a scene there. At the same time, those in the neighborhood could and often did contest the existence of this space by complaining and calling the police. Although dependent on the bohemian and loud party culture in the neighborhood, punk space at the Pirate House was also marginal there. It was even “out of place” in the “out of place” student ghetto—a ghetto within a ghetto, constantly in danger of being shut down (see also Ruddick 1991).

This precariousness of space, with the Pirate House simultaneously fitting and not fitting the local area, paralleled the social location of participants. They too held a precarious position by being simultaneously privileged and marginal. Although they were going to college and may soon be professionals and powerful people, the punks in this town were in the temporarily diminished status of young adults. They had little money to regularly rent out a meeting room or concert hall, much less buy or build one themselves. Yet, such practical concerns were not the only thing that informed their choice of space; it was also aesthetic and ideological. Temporarily transforming a residential home into a punk space was an expression of identity. Punk has a long tradition of rejecting contemporary ways of music making, including professional venues. Participants preferred the makeshift space of the Pirate House (their space) to hearing this music in a more “legitimate” venue (someone else’s space). Ironically, participants had the privilege to become marginal, and the privilege to choose the Pirate House for its marginality.

This “imagined marginality” is tied to an authentic punk identity, as “real” punks have a romantic wish to be poor, dirty, and marked with stigmatizing—usually self-inflicted—bodily characteristics like tattoos, piercings, and dreadlocked, “nappy” hair (Fox 1987; Traber 2001). These styles often borrow from stigmatized populations like indigenous people and African Americans. As Hetherington (1998, 71) writes of “marginalized Others”:

Identifying with the Other does not just mean acting on behalf of that other … it is also clearly a vehicle for self-expression. One becomes authentic, has an identity that is real and valuable, by identifying with that (or who) which is marginalized within society… . The case is that the idea of margins, the idea of ethnicity and the idea of Otherness become important symbolic resources for those seeking to express their own identities in a world in which they do not feel at home.

Upper-middle-class punks were doing this self-conscious “Othering,” contrasting them with stigmatized populations—like the homeless, immigrants, people of color, etc.—who cannot choose their marginality. This was a (voluntary) use of the styles and experience of (involuntarily) oppressed people in order to be authentic by the standards of punk.

The space of the Pirate House reflected this identity. Its very name celebrated marginality, an allegiance with the outsider and the rebellious. Along with pirates, I heard frequent conversations celebrating train-hopping hobos, a famed area abolitionist, and especially youth. (In a conversation, one punk told me, “When you turn twenty-five your body starts to fall apart. I can’t imagine being thirty.”) While these are somewhat playful examples, the Pirate House was also a key site of collective action. The residents of the house were especially committed Leftist activists in various antiracist, antisexist, antiglobalization, and animal rights campaigns—causes for marginalized populations. The world of punk is often a launching pad for participants to enter the world of activism and social movements (Leung and Kier 2008; Moore and Roberts 2009; Williams 2007; Zobl 2004). Anarchist punks, like those at the Pirate House, are frequent sights on the front lines of globalization protests, as the confrontational ethos of punk merges with “direct action” protest strategies.

Transformation— Adding Meaning

The Pirate House was simply the ordinary space of a rental home until the participants turned it into a punk place. People transform space into place by adding meaning and significance to it (Gieryn 2000; Harvey 1989; Lofland 1998; Tuan 1977). Just as human bodies become punk as people add adornment and decorations to them, this space also became punk as participants filled it with punk significance. These markers became active ingredients in generating a punk community through collective events, when decorations merged with punk bodies and musical performance to form a unified collectivity.

By decorating the house, the residents made it easy for fellow punks to identify it as a punk place. Spread across the front of the Pirate House, a visual centerpiece, was a rickety porch on which sat a much-used swing, a few broken chairs and an old couch. However, the house was most recognizable by a large skull and crossbones pirate flag hanging above the porch. The residents soon added lit “Anarchy” and “Equality” signs (the letters “A” and “E,” respectively, both with circles around them) made out of Christmas lights to either side of the flag. Through a front door, the porch led into a foyer and an adjoining living room. Bands played in this room, and people ate many potlucks there as well. The house’s furnishings were a motley collection of old, dirty couches, a few chairs, and a table made from milk crates and a board that (as Andy proudly told me) had been stolen from a grocery store and construction site, respectively. After a few months, residents added a “real” table, and attendants sat on the milk crates during weekly potlucks. Posters and flyers also announced political slogans (“Free Mumia”), shows, and other things, like a few Star Wars posters. The residents covered the kitchen walls with flyers that announced shows from long ago. These decorations were intentionally out of place in this suburban home, helping to transform the space from its intended function—a private space for residents to raise a family—into a punk place. This odd-seeming bricolage fits the style of punk houses everywhere (Banks 2007). It was also a spatial act of imagined marginality, infusing a typical suburban home with disorder, grit, and other markers of “Otherness.”

What the concept of a scene captures, and studies of identity in youth culture tend to miss, is the importance of events for the collective melding of these symbols. Punk styles—both in the house and on bodies there—have a very different function during collective events than in isolation. While the lone punk style or slogan is often a provocative symbol of alienation or resistance, such symbols become markers of togetherness when combined. During events, the house acted as a kind of bubble or cocoon that united participants into a community, and the shared symbols in the house, as well as on members, solidified these elements into a punk world. The pull to join this collective is so great that some participants shun their usual clothing, only dressing punk for events, while others dress this way at all times and places. Fox (1987) explains this as the effect of varying levels of personal commitment, but an alternative explanation is that these events have such a collective pull to them that participants feel drawn to meld with the scene—even in ways that can be socially prohibitive for them in other settings.

The culmination of this collective merging was the punk “show,” which added the unifying element of musical performance. The college students around them held regular parties—gatherings that lacked live music and instead focused on drinking and socializing. Yet, the element of performance was so central to residents of the house that they only rarely held similar parties. The residents rented Pirate House with the intention of having a place to live, but also as a place regularly to hold shows. They announced shows ahead of time by flyer, posting on a website, or by “word of mouth”—information by person, telephone, or e-mail. At shows, the main attraction was bands. Depending on the show, from two to as many as five or six played. They were usually a mixture of local bands as well as “touring” acts from out of town that generally played after the “openers.” Touring bands regularly trekked across America to play such shows, performing to as few as twenty people in a different club, rental hall, basement, or garage every night.

The combination of decorations on the house, styles on punk bodies, and punk events transformed the space into a scene place, filling it with rich meanings and feelings of connection for those within the punk community. At the same time, those outside of this social world often found these unifying meanings unintelligible or having negative connotations—that is, if they noticed them at all. For example, Andy reported that a neighbor had asked if their “circle E” sign (meaning “equality”) stood for the drug “Ecstasy.” He told her that it stood for “Email.” These meanings defined the community, drawing participants together, and they created boundaries that solidified the status of insiders from outsiders (Erikson 1966). Yet, as I detail in the next section, these boundaries were fluid and fragile. They took interactional effort to define and maintain.

Management— Defining and Defending Boundaries

While the events and meanings discussed above defined the house as a punk space, participants had to do continual work to maintain the boundaries between this punk world and other territories. They achieved this through careful spatial management. In her study of cities, Lofland (1998, 10) divides urban space into three “realms”—the private, parochial, and public: “The private realm is the world of the household and friend and kinship networks; the parochial realm is the world of the neighborhood, workplace, or acquaintance networks; and the public realm is the world of strangers and the ‘street.’” The Pirate House reflects these spatial arrangements. The places outside of the house, including its porch, were in the public realm, the world of anonymous public life. The places of residents, especially their bedrooms, were in the private, household realm. The places of punk events were in the parochial realm, the space of loose acquaintances. These realms defined the spatial boundaries of the punk scene, making some places “punk” (parochial realms) while others were “non-punk” (both public and private realms).

The outside of the house, where it merged with the street, was in the public realm. Here participants saw, they were seen, and they interacted with neighbors and the general public. The porch of the Pirate House was a part of this region. The Pirate Punks acknowledged it as open for others to use. For example, during a show I expressed my envy of the porch, saying, “I wish I had a porch.” Mike answered, “You always have a porch. Any time you want to just come by and sit on ours. We’re always out there.” The porch was open in another way, as people in cars, bicycles, and walking by were often interacting with those there:

Ben told the story about being out on the porch, “And these girls drove by and they were looking at us. And then they came around again, and the one said ‘I want to suck your cock.’” Walter walked out onto the porch. He added, “But they were being very condescending about it.”

While sitting on the porch, slightly above the street and about twenty feet from it, I sometimes felt like someone on the grandstand at a parade, watching the proceedings. But at other times, when the porch was crowded with people, some smoking or discreetly (or not-so-discreetly) drinking, and I glanced over at the people stopped at the stoplight, looking out of their cars at us, I thought that I was the one on display. Although the porch was a part of the private property of the house and legally a private space, here it was in the public realm. Anyone passing by could watch or be watched by those on the porch.

As one receded further into the house, the public character of the space became more and more intimate. The area where bands played, the foyer and living room, was open to people who came to shows. Yet, it lacked the public interaction with people on the street, which the porch had. This was “parochial” space, the space of community. During shows, theoretically everyone could enter the house (often for a small fee charged at the door). Participants posted fliers that announced future shows on walls, light posts, online, and other places, calling for “all ages” to come. Still, by and large these events only attracted the usual crowd of punks, a group of friends and acquaintances.

Further inside the house, the bedrooms had little of the public and parochial character of the porch and band area. There were only three or four times when I went into these, always for less than ten minutes at a time. Unlike the more open spaces in the house, I never went in these rooms without a resident inviting me. Likewise, while all visitors used the bathroom on the ground floor, the upstairs bathroom, while never explicitly designated off-limits, was more private and less used.

The residents of the Pirate House carefully defined and actively defended these spatial boundaries. They did this by dancing on a line between conflicting pulls to open and control the space. Participants wanted to manage the space, but they also wanted the space to be “open” and “free,” with control seeming invisible and even natural to those in attendance. Here punk ideals of egalitarianism and anarchy influenced them. A visitor to the house may conclude that there was no authority in charge at all. Yet, there were many eyes watching and gently guiding what was happening there.

Residents handled this regulation, flirting between control and openness, with various strategies. It was often subtle, as the residents used jokes and delicate manipulations of the physical space such as closing certain doors and leaving others open. For example, participants at potlucks got into the habit of dumping their dirty dishes into the sink after meals, leaving them for residents to clean. One evening, when carrying these dishes to the kitchen, Mike pointed out this problem with a half-hearted and humorous attempt at regulation, saying, “Ok, now it’s time to clean up.” He paused for a moment, and then he said, “It didn’t work but it was worth a try. It’s porch time.” The residents also had strategies of control that were more formal. After a party, Andy described how residents of the house woke up to a large mess:

I came downstairs and I was like—ugh—I don’t need this shit… . There was about an inch of water on the floor in the kitchen and someone broke the screen door into three pieces. We duct taped it together.

In their discussion of this incident, the residents concluded that their prearranged system, where one of them should be “on call” during these events, broke down.

Not maintaining boundaries, especially the boundary between public and parochial space, could have disastrous consequences. About a year after my time doing fieldwork, a band played on the porch of the Pirate House, with the audience standing on the front lawn. This extended parochial space out into the public realm, clashing with it. Police quickly arrived at the scene. Regulation assured that punk events, especially shows, could continue. Not doing so would most assuredly end shows and even their residence.

Reflection— Reshaping Identities

The establishment, transformation, and management of space all show how members were able to take over and use a space, instill it with punk meanings, as well as manage various areas of it. Yet, the transformation of meaning was not a one-way activity. Efforts of participants to construct the space reflected back onto themselves, as their shaping of the space in turn shaped them.

A key way that the space transformed members involved their identities. The management of space was also a management of identities. By defining “punk” and “non-punk” areas, as I discussed above, residents were also defining legitimate and illegitimate participants in this space. The police, as outsiders attempting to control punk space—in effect trumping the punk community’s methods of control—were especially illegitimate. For example, Mike and Walter told me about an interaction with the police:

Walter said that the cops had come to their house today. Mike interrupted, in fake country accent, “Yeah, the fucking pigs always trying to put us down. They’re trying to break us, but we told them, ‘Fuck you piggy wiggy!’” Recognizing the humor, I asked Walter what really happened. Mike broke in, “It was the fucking pigs trying to tell us what to do. We threw bottles at them ‘til they drove off.” I again asked Walter what really happened. He replied, “The real story’s much less interesting than the way we tell it.” Mike yelled, “The Man knocking on our door. We said, ‘Fuck you!’”

I later learned that the police knocked on the door during a noisy band practice in the basement. Mike’s elaboration added a romantic, yet comic, edge of resistance to what could have been a mundane story. However, underneath this comic exaggeration was the reality of police authority. By being able to shut down punk events, the police were more powerful than the residents were.

As I detailed above, the space of the scene could be so overwhelming and all-encompassing that it made participants voluntarily wish to add punk markings to their bodies. Yet, participants also actively enforced these boundaries of “punk” and “non-punk.” Style is a main way that members determine legitimate punk membership (Force 2009; Fox 1987; Moore 2004; Williams 2006). Regular participants at the Pirate House were quick to see those who were outside of the style, with little or no “subcultural capital” (Thornton 1996) in fashion, beliefs, or knowledge. For example, Mike noticed someone at a show who he thought did not fit at the Pirate House:

He leaned over to me, “See that guy in the leather jacket and the hat.” I looked and saw a guy who had a jacket, black shirt and mustache. He looked very “redneck,” for lack of a better term. “Don’t stare!” he admonished, “Now, you’re a regular here, what’s going on here?”

Mike was perplexed that someone dressed like this would be at the Pirate House.

The residents not only helped define the space and the identities within it, their association with the house also reflected on them. People outside of local communities knew about the house, as touring bands and travelers from all over the world visited there. As requests from touring bands flooded in, the residents were soon fielding calls from across the country and even around the world. They grew identities as punk gatekeepers to an important local venue. This identity of “Pirate Punks,” whether they embraced the title or not (and from the complaints that I heard, they did not), became well known as word of the Pirate House spread.

This relationship between space and identity varies from current conceptions of punk membership. While the above example of Mike pointing out an inappropriate style could illustrate individual-level stylistic codes of being punk, it is also evidence of collective spatial standards—fitting the overall look and feel of this parochial space. Interestingly, Mike stated his objection in spatial terms (“you’re a regular here”). By pointing out an inappropriate style, he may or may not have been reinforcing standards of membership as a punk. However, he was definitely stating that the style did not fit the setting—a punk event.

At the same time, interactional and spatial circumstances explain the identity of the “Pirate Punks.” The residents did not voluntarily achieve this identity. Instead, the context ascribed it to them against their wishes. Their identities formed as much from their structural position in local networks and access to key resources as their knowledge and use of punk culture. The Pirate Punks were not only authentic because they knew the rules, practices, and history of punk (although they certainly did). They were authentic because they lived in a punk house, with close connections to that punk space.

This construction of identity also led to different levels of power within the scene—a topic rarely discussed in studies. Despite punk’s focus on equality and critique of hierarchical authority, the residents of the house were in control there. It is no coincidence that those participants who were in power were all men, mirroring the findings of research on gender in punk (Leblanc 1999; McRobbie and Garber 1976). On the opposite extreme, I discovered that I had little power to control this space. While the Pirate Punks often invited me to use the house freely (remember, they told me that their porch was my porch), many incidents betray this. On several occasions, the residents reprimanded me for imposing my own definitions on the space. Once, when I walked into the house without knocking first, Mike sarcastically said, “Well, just let yourself in then.” At another time:

Four people walked up, two girls and two guys, who I had never seen before. They stood apprehensively at the edge of the porch, and I said, “You can come up.” Mike said, “Hey, whose porch is this anyway for you to invite people onto?” He pointed to the street with a mock order for me to leave.

The residents of the house had more control over the boundaries of punk than I did. This control made them more powerful than me and other participants. Yet, this also meant that they had much more work and responsibility, concerns they regularly voiced.

Discussion

Recent research reconceptualizes youth culture as grounded in social contexts, as well as the shared meanings of participants that shape these contexts. Yet, empirical studies have not closely explored this theoretical shift. Despite allusions to the social construction of scene space, scholars largely treat them as destinations—local, international, or virtual locations that members find and inhabit. Likewise, studies of youth culture identity tend to consider it at the extremes of the micro level (as a mental and bodily collection of symbols, beliefs, and practices) and the macro level (as responses to large-scale social forces). Looking to embrace further this situated and interpretive turn of the research, this study adds to the literature by analyzing the microprocesses through which a scene is accomplished—how participants come together and construct these settings.

Based on data collected at a punk house named “The Pirate House,” I argue that participants created the scene there through distinct strategies to establish, transform, and manage space. First, participants found a suitable space for the “establishment” of a punk place. This was a rental house in an area of town that tolerated—although barely—its unusual use of space. While the members did face obstacles regarding where to create a scene, they ironically had the privilege to choose this marginal space. Second, participants initiated a “transformation” of the space. They made it “punk” by filling it with meanings, including decorations and punk people. Participants activated such styles during events, when these symbols combined with musical performance to bind participants together into a shared collectivity. Third, participants engaged in the “management” of the space, defining some areas of the house as “punk” space and others as “non-punk.” They defended these definitions through various strategies, including informal humor, subtle manipulations of the space, and more formal systems of management.

Theoretically, a fourth process would be “decline.” By analyzing how scenes emerge and continue, I also provide insights into why local scenes collapse so easily. The Pirate House would have failed if any one of the processes of establishment, transformation, or management were no longer viable. For example, the space would decline if, due to gentrification, the neighborhood was no longer marginal; or if residents could no longer transform it into a “parochial” space for punk events; or if the Pirate Punks stopped managing the space. Because of my relatively short time of observation, I did not witness the downturn of the house, where it lost its punk character and transformed back into a rental home.

The setting of the Pirate House, which the residents had created, came to define and reinforce identities. Definitions of the space reflected definitions of identity, as “punk” and “non-punk” spaces mirrored “punk” and “non-punk” participants. These interactional rules became apparent when the police and less-than-fashionable participants broke them. The residents also had an identity “reflected” back onto them through their structural position in this setting. The “Pirate Punks” became central members, not only because of any authenticity in their styles, knowledge, or any other individual attributes (although these factors were certainly important), but also because they were central to the scene.

In conclusion, by delving deeper into the microprocesses of how scenes emerge and continue, this study also informs our understandings of the construction of scene space, as well as the relationship between such definitions of reality and the identities of members. As this case illustrates, instead of being a location that is found and used, participants actively create and maintain scene spaces through shared activity. Echoing the literature on space and place, the Pirate House was an interactional accomplishment, constructed out of everyday interactions that generated, altered, and defended definitions of it. Of course, this single case study is hardly generalizable to all other settings. In fact, it clearly falters as an explanation of virtual scenes. It would be difficult to argue that online scene spaces grow in marginal areas of the internet, or that participants transform previously non-punk websites or other internet spaces into punk space by adding meanings to them. Virtual spaces of scenes seem to follow different rules of interaction than their physical components. Future research could explore the ways that participants “do” various scenes.

The establishment and maintenance of this scene influenced the establishment and maintenance of identity. The setting of scenes like the Pirate House is an additional variable—along with knowledge, ideology, style, commitment, and authenticity—that influences punk identity. This influence happened in three ways. First, participants gained identities through their choice of where to establish a scene. Their allegiance with the marginal, those on the lower rungs of society, distanced them from their privileged race and class backgrounds, and it bolstered their “imagined marginality” as punks. Second, the spatial context influenced the definition of a punk identity. As they intertwined identity with the construction of a parochial, punk space, participants were hesitant about non-punks being in that space. Participants did not simply focus on punk identities; they were concerned with punk identities in this particular setting. Third, the spaces of the house were an active force in dynamics of power, their manipulation making some participants more powerful than others. As central participants who held key resources, residents of the house especially gained influential identities as “Pirate Punks.” They had greater amounts of responsibility and control over the house than others, generating unequal identities. The residents did not freely choose these definitions of identity. Instead, they emerged from their structural positions as controllers of scene space.