Sexual and Physical Violence in Australian Punk and Hardcore Music Scenes

Focused on the Australian punk and hardcore music scene, this book provides an innovative balance between the acknowledgement of harm and the celebration of pleasure in live music spaces.

Despite decades of advocacy within vibrant music communities, stories of sexual and physical violence persist. Although anecdotally common in alternative music cultures, the interpretation and experiences of harm have remained absent from criminological analysis. Gradients of harm dictate and frame certain behaviour as ’unacceptable’ or ’encouraged’ under specific social conditions. As explored through qualitative research interviews and the author’s lived experience, violence within music scenes is a complex, personal, and collective experience.

Issues such as discrimination, social inequality, stereotyping and rape myth acceptance are instrumental in shaping how people in the punk and hardcore scenes fail to recognise, minimize, and dismiss violence in their community. This text questions how and why some people are ’worthy’ or ’unworthy’ victims of crime, and why harmful behaviour continues within these spaces.

Sexual and Physical Violence in Australian Punk and Hardcore Music Scenes will be of interest to researchers in the field of criminology and sociology but is also applicable to a wider academic audience interested in violence, deviance, and subcultures.

Ash Barnes is a Research Fellow at the University of Tasmania, Australia. They have expertise and interest in the field of sexual violence and physical violence, deviance, and pleasure.