Konstantin Butz Livres

»Grinding California« provides the first academic analysis of the subculture of skate punk at book-length. It establishes highly critical evaluations of the discourses that influenced early skateboarding and punk cultures. Based on an examination of songs, flyers, magazines, and videos, Konstantin Butz revisits American popular cultures of the 1980s and approaches them from a variety of theoretical and methodological angles. He introduces contemplations of the rebellious potential that can be located within skate punk's material and corporeal contestations of the site-specific locale of suburban Southern California. Theoretical recourses to thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Jean Baudrillard and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht are topped off with excerpts from interviews with some of the most influential protagonists of the 1980s skate punk scene.

For more than 40 years, hardcore and punk have promised to offer an alternative to what is perceived as the norm and the mainstream. Hardcore Research: Punk, Practice, Politics provides a comprehensive insight into some of the most active, outspoken, and widely received scholarly positions in the academic discourses on hardcore and punk and combines them with a variety of new and emerging voices. The book brings together scholars with personal ties to past and present hardcore and punk scenes, who present both insightful and critical examinations of the rich and varied histories of this subcultural phenomenon and its current reverberations at the intersection of cultural practice and academic research.

Skateboarding is not immediately associated with university research projects. It is first and foremost a physical activity, and no scholarly approach can substitute for the empirical knowledge gained through the act of skateboarding itself—the movement of the body with and on a skateboard. Nevertheless, the theoretical implications of this movement and its spatial, cultural, and social settings are ripe for exploration within a number of different academic disciplines. The publication provides a comprehensive insight into these discourses. Since skateboarding can influence and touch upon so many aspects of our everyday life through its unique appropriation of and relation to the urban environment, the theoretical reflections and discursive explorations it triggers can alter the way we think and move.