Full Description
Alternativity delineates those spaces, scenes, club-cultures, objects and practices in modern society that are considered to be actively designed to be counter or resistive to mainstream popular culture. The idea of the alternative in popular culture became mainstream with the rise of the counter culture in 1960s America (though there were earlier forms of alternative cultures in America and other Western countries). Alternativity is associated with marginalization, both actively pursued by individuals, and imposed on individuals and sub-cultures, and was originally represented and constructed through acts of transgression, and through shared sub-cultural capital.
This edited collection maps the landscape of alternativity and marginalization, providing new theory and methods in a currently under-theorized area, setting out the issues, questions, concerns and directions of this area of study. It demonstrates the theoretical richness and empirical diversity of the interdisciplinary field it encompasses, and is deliberately feminist in its approach and its composition, with a majority of the contributors being women. Divided into three sub-sections, focused on sub-cultures, bodies and spaces, contributors explore this exciting new terrain, both through critiques of theory and new theoretical developments, and case studies of alternativity and marginalization in practice and in performance, expanding our understanding of the alternative, the liminal and the transgressive.
Contents
Introduction; Samantha Holland and Karl Spracklen Section I: Subcultures
1. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Dressed in Street Fashions?: Investigating Virtually Constructed Fashion Subcultures; Theresa M. Winge
2. Cursed is the Fruit of Thy Womb: Inversion/Subversion and the Inscribing of Morality on Women's Bodies in Heavy Metal; Amanda DiGioia and Dr. Charlotte Naylor Davis
3. Japanophilia in Kuwait: How Far Does International Culture Penetrate?; Thorsten Botz-Bornstein
4. Misogyny as an Artistic Tool in the Construction of '80s Glam Metal's Aesthetics: An Alternative Perspective; Gareth Heritage
5. Reight Mardy Tykes: Gothic/Doom Metal as an Act of English Northernness; M. Selim Yavuz
Section II: Bodies
6. Unwritten Rules and Societal Norms of Tattooed Female Bodies; Charlotte Dann
7. 'Tattooed and Beautiful?': Tattoo Collecting and Embodied Gender Deviance; Beverly Yuen Thompson
8. Russian Feminisms, Queer Activism and the Western Gaze: Female Bodies Between Spectacles and Celebration, Victimizations and (Self-)Marginalization; M. Katharina Wiedlack
9. Out of Time: Anohni and Transgendered/Transage Transgression; Abigail Gardner
10. Irrational Perspectives and Untenable Positions: Sociology, 'Mental Illness' and 'Dis'ability; Kay Inckle
Section III: Spaces
11. Ageing Alternative Women: Discourses of Authenticity, Resistance and 'Coolness'; Samantha Holland
12. Girls to the Front? Gender and Alternative Spaces; Laura Way
13. "In the Land of Grey and Pink": Popular Music Alternativity in the Lived and Imagined City of Canterbury 2017; Asya Draganova and Shane Blackman
Conclusion:
Making Sense of Alternativity in Leisure and Culture: Back to Sub-Culture?; Karl Spracklen
