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Culture from the Slums explores the history of punk rock in East
and West Germany during the 1970s and 1980s. These decades
witnessed an explosion of alternative culture across divided
Germany, and punk was a critical constituent of this movement. For
young Germans at the time, punk appealed to those gravitating
towards cultural experimentation rooted in notions of
authenticity-endeavors considered to be more 'real' and 'genuine.'
Adopting musical subculture from abroad and rearticulating the
genre locally, punk gave individuals uncomfortable with their
societies the opportunity to create alternative worlds. Examining
how youths mobilized music to build alternative communities and
identities during the Cold War, Culture from the Slums details how
punk became the site of historical change during this era: in the
West, concerning national identity, commercialism, and
politicization; while in the East, over repression, resistance, and
collaboration. But on either side of the Iron Curtain, punks'
struggles for individuality and independence forced their societies
to come to terms with their political, social, and aesthetic
challenges, confrontations which pluralized both states, a
surprising similarity connecting democratic, capitalist West
Germany with socialist, authoritarian East Germany. In this manner,
Culture from the Slums suggests that the ideas, practices, and
communities which youths called into being transformed both German
societies along more diverse and ultimately democratic lines. Using
a wealth of previously untapped archival documentation, this study
reorients German and European history during this period by
integrating alternative culture and music subculture into broader
narratives of postwar inquiry and explains how punk rock shaped
divided Germany in the 1970s and 1980s.
The essays in this collection make up the first study of "dropping
out" of late state socialism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet
Union. From Leningrad intellectuals and Berlin squatters to Bosnian
Muslim madrassa students and Romanian yogis, groups and individuals
across the Eastern Bloc rejected mainstream socialist culture. In
the process, multiple drop-out cultures were created, with their
own spaces, music, values, style, slang, ideology and networks.
Under socialism, this phenomenon was little-known outside the
socialist sphere. Only very recently has it been possible to
reconstruct it through archival work, oral histories and memoirs.
Such a diverse set of subcultures demands a multi-disciplinary
approach: the essays in this volume are written by historians,
anthropologists and scholars of literature, cultural and gender
studies. The history of these movements not only shows us a side of
state socialist life that was barely known in the west. It also
sheds new light on the demise and eventual collapse of late
socialism, and raises important questions about the similarities
and differences between Eastern and Western subcultures.
The essays in this collection make up the first study of "dropping
out" of late state socialism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet
Union. From Leningrad intellectuals and Berlin squatters to Bosnian
Muslim madrassa students and Romanian yogis, groups and individuals
across the Eastern Bloc rejected mainstream socialist culture. In
the process, multiple drop-out cultures were created, with their
own spaces, music, values, style, slang, ideology and networks.
Under socialism, this phenomenon was little-known outside the
socialist sphere. Only very recently has it been possible to
reconstruct it through archival work, oral histories and memoirs.
Such a diverse set of subcultures demands a multi-disciplinary
approach: the essays in this volume are written by historians,
anthropologists and scholars of literature, cultural and gender
studies. The history of these movements not only shows us a side of
state socialist life that was barely known in the west. It also
sheds new light on the demise and eventual collapse of late
socialism, and raises important questions about the similarities
and differences between Eastern and Western subcultures.
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