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This book argues that punk and post-punk, whatever their respective internal stylistic heterogeneity, enjoyed 'sociological reality' in Samuel Gilmore's and Howard Becker's sense. It elaborates the concept of 'music worlds', contrasting it with alternatives from the sociological literature. In particular it contrasts it with the concepts 'subculture', 'scene' and 'field'. The book then outlines a number of concepts which allow us to explore the localised process in which punk took shape in a sociologically rigorous manner. In particular it discusses the concepts of 'critical mass' and 'social networks'. The book also applies these concepts to the London punk world of 1976. It considers how talk about punk migrated from face-to-face networks to mass media networks and the effects of that shift. Continuing the discussion of punk's diffusion and growth, the book considers how punk worlds took shape in Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield. In addition, however, the book offers a more technical analysis of the network structures of the post-punk worlds of the three cities. Furthermore, extending this analysis, and combining qualitative and quantitative forms of analysis, the book considers how activities in different local post-punk worlds were themselves linked in a network, constituting a national post-punk world.
. Although DiMaggio associates this process with audiences, artists and journalists may be involved too (the roles are not mutually exclusive), blurring the boundaries between the forms of classification which he distinguishes. We can find elements of each of these processes of classification in relation to punk and elements of at least two in relation to post-punk. I expand upon this in a moment. First, however, I want to add a further consideration. In a paper which complements DiMaggio’s, Samuel Gilmore (1988) warns against genre classifications which lack ‘sociological
Others tried to blame the fairies for the deaths of their infants. In 1852, Samuel Gilmore claimed that his seven-week-old illegitimate infant had been stolen from his house by the ‘wee folk’. It was later discovered that Gilmore had been instrumental in causing the death of his child.111 Mary Meehan was the daughter of a small farmer. Infanticide was generally regarded as a crime committed by the lower strata of Irish society. Women of this class generally had to work or engage in household activities outside the home. This may have rendered them vulnerable to rape or