Body Style (Subcultural Style) - Hardcover

Body Style is a welcome project, at once accessible to students and the general public and relevant to professional anthropologists... We welcome more attention to the cultural variations within Western societies and to the complex and controversial interplay between Western societies and (at least imagined versions of) non-Western ones... The book gives us pause to think about the extremes to which people will go, and perhaps must go in the post-modern era, to make themselves. -- Jack David Eller * Anthropology Review Database *

Body Style reveals the subcultural body as a site for understanding subcultural identity, resistance, agency, and fashion. Analyzed, theorized, politicized, and sensationalized, the subcultural body functions as a framework where individuals build a sense of self and subcultural identity. Drawing on specific subcultural examples and interviews with members, Body Style explores the subcultural body and its style within global culture.

Body Style is the result of over twelve years of research examining these intersections within specific urban subcultures, including Urban Tribals, Modern Primitives, Punks, Cybers, Industrials, Skaters, and others. Divided into three main sections on subcultural body history, subcultural body identity and subcultural body styles, this book will be of particular interest to students of dress and fashion as well as those coming to subculture from sociology and cultural studies.