Hipsters - Death of the Last Subculture?

I was fairly amused/intrigued by the piece in The Observer* at the weekend on 'The End of the Hipster' and then quite timely I was listening to Thinking Allowed podcasts on the work commute this morning and Laurie Taylor was in conversation with Bjørn Schiermer regarding his paper 'Late Modern Hipsters: new tendencies in popular culture'. It's very interesting considering the debates within youth cultures/subcultures and links to many questions regarding the nature of contemporary subcultures (or are they neo-tribes? scenes? and so forth...) but also the notion of youth culture itself since these hipsters might not be of that specific demographic it seems. Something to watch a bit more closely perhaps in the future and I'm sure there's already an increasing academic interest in this group. *Even more amusing was perhaps The Guardian's Spot a Hipster!

Rave, Jewish Punks and Female Masturbation

Some interesting pieces on The Guardian today: - the secret history of the UK's 'punky Jews' - images of 90s rave culture - pop music and female masturbation

Post-Youth Punk Women

So as well as trying to be better at updating this blog, I'm now opening it up to include things related to my PhD and perhaps also my sociology teaching. Not that it's going to be that much of a divergence since gender is a prevailing issue within both. I'm in my second year of a part-time PhD in Sociology. The working title is Typical Girls? An Exploration of Post-Youth Punk Women 'Being' and 'Doing' Punk and I want to explore questions such as: How do ageing female punks maintain a punk identity? How is this punk identity expressed? How does a punk identity interact with an ageing identity and life events? What is the relationship between femininity, the body, ageing and 'being punk?' What, if any, significance does the internet/virtual communities hold for post-youth punks?

It's getting to the point now where beginning to actually do research is approaching and a main concern for me is the digital side of the research; how to go about it, whether it's going to be of any use. A second concern is actually finding post-youth punk women who are willing to talk to me! So these are issues I'm thinking about right now. Get in touch with anything you think might be of interest to me.