Abstracts Category : Other

Punk Politics: The Evolution of A Rebellion

by Anthony Snellings

Punk and its meaning has been examined by scholars in various ways. For example, some scholars have focused on punk as a regional phenomenon, but these studies primarily follow punk of the 1970s and 1980s. Others have centered their focus on the do-it-yourself (DIY) politics of the subculture. Yet neither of these scholarly approaches focus on the nationally occurring trends that become more present in the age of the Internet in the 2000s. This examine punk political activism in the 2000s and how it built on the characteristics from earlier punk. It does this by analyzing the creations of various punks with an emphasis on the Rock Against Bush movement which began with the launch of the Punk Voter website in late 2002. Started by Fat Mike Burkett of the punk band NOFX, this website connected itself to previous punk activism but became primarily an anti-Bush news propagator. By examining punk websites, tours, and music, this study illustrates continuing themes and characteristics of punk from its solidification in the United States in the 1980s. The Internet became an integral part of their activism as it utilized the growing punk audience and lowering of boundaries created by the technology. This thesis concludes by explaining that this moment of punk is important for the academic understanding of how subcultures are affected by the creation of the Internet. Moving forward, scholarly discussions of punk should see the value in studying the national trends of punk within the age of the Internet and examine how subcultures like punk shift away from their roots created before the technological infrastructure of the Internet.Advisors/Committee Members: Charles, Jeff (advisor), Hijar, Katherine (committeemember).