Cultura giovanile e condizione di flusso: a partire dal punk = Youth culture and flux condition: from punk

Abstract

According to the sociologist Dick Hebdige, young people of the punk movement lived in a condition of flux. It represents an existential condition that they themselves deeply desired, and which anticipated a similar situation of instability and dynamism that is increasingly spreading within contemporary hypermodern societies. Thus, the punk movement has to some extent anticipated one of the most important processes of social change that have occurred in recent decades. This article attempts to trace the main characteristics of punk, as well as to reconstruct synthetically the nature of this social movement. The aim is to investigate whether these characteristics can also be identified within the youth subcultures born in the following decades and within the contemporary social context. If this happens, it is because this context has an urgent need to intensify its flows. Flows that concern the economy of material flows, but especially that of immaterial flows. Finally, contemporary media (radio, television and above all the Internet and digital platforms) also bear a high degree of responsibility for this situation, because these media use a model of communication based on flows.