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The Path to Punkhood, and Being a Punk

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Punk Culture in Contemporary China
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Abstract

This chapter continues the discussion of the individual punk musicians’ practices and, through the picture painted, explores how one enters the punk scene and remains a punk. The aim is less to simply understand those everyday cultural activities of the punk musicians than to examine the prominent factors influencing the punk career path, including the aspects of education and the meanings of day jobs. More importantly, in doing so, it reveals what kind of lifestyle the punk musicians seek or idealise in the process of pursuing punk authenticity. Shedding light on how punk musicians internalise punk values and incorporate them into their personal trajectories illuminates, in turn, the mainstream norms that they generally are at odds with and thereby leads to fuller understanding of the power structure in Chinese society.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In China’s system of development priorities for cities, the fourth tier has the lowest priority. The gross domestic product of a typical third-tier city comes to 18–67 billion US dollars.

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Xiao, J. (2018). The Path to Punkhood, and Being a Punk. In: Punk Culture in Contemporary China. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0977-9_4

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