Goth: Identity, Style and Subculture by Paul Hodkinson

I picked this book up while waiting in a queue in the library because I thought it looked really quirky and interesting, and I really enjoyed it. It wasn't exactly what I was expecting, I've recently been listening to a lot of 1980s 'goth classics' (Bauhaus, Sisters of the Mercy, The Mission, etc, etc) and thought that the book would be about that time period, but it's actually about the goth scene of the late 1990s and doesn't focus on the music very much. It's a very specific ethnographic study and is written in a very clear, coherent and convincing way. The second chapter lays out critical approaches to subcultures very well and avoids confusing jargon, which was very helpful for people like me, who don't have a lot of experience in reading sociological works. I found that chapter particularly good because it's both a challenging read and actually understandable (there are so many scholarly works where I read the same sentence ten times and it still makes no sense because of the endless jargon and lugubrious grammar). What makes this book particularly interesting is that the author, unlike most people who theorise subculture, has actually been part of one. I get the impression, when I read books about modern communities, that the people writing see themselves as greatly superior to the participants, who they seem to think can't analyse their own involvement. It feels like there's some annoying old man who thinks he knows everything, going around and judging from observation, and just making up ridiculous theories. This book didn't feel like that at all, because the author shows how his experience of being part of the goth subculture contradicts or undermines a lot of subcultural theories and calls for a revision of them. It also made me feel really happy because a lot of the time I feel like people who participate in subcultures or even are enthusiastic about cultural events are perceived as stupid, so for example, I feel ashamed of having been a regular concert-goer in the past when I'm around other people who are pursuing MA or higher degrees. So I thought it was amazing that the author used to be a goth and is now a professor and used his participation in the subculture as research. And it reminded me of Noel Fielding on the IT Crowd with this 'Goth 2 Boss' thing about how goths can succeed in the workplace.