English abstract by Merle Mulder
Merle Mulder
Straight Edge:
Subkultur, Ideologie, Lebensstil? [= Subculture, Ideology, Lifestyle?]
Erweiterte Neuauflage
“Don’t drink / Don’t smoke / Don’t fuck / At least I can fucking think”, sung Ian MacKaye, leader of the band Minor Threat, in 1981 in his song “Out of Step (with the World”) and caught with it for many adolescent contemporaries the spirit of the age. Further he formulated with this song the basic ideas of a phenomenon, which can be found now more than 25 years later on all continents of the earth: Straight Edge (sXe).
Above all the rejection of alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and promiscuity, the
wish for control over the own body and spirit, a positive basic attitude
and the love for music characterized Straight Edge especially in its starting
time.
Until now Straight Edge remained largely unheeded in the scientific discourse.
Also the most basic question was disregarded up to now: What is Straight
Edge at all? And hereby doesn’t only the question of the contents
or a definition of sXe matter but also the question of a meaningful theoretical
classification.
So, this previous gap should be filled up in this work. For this, the
most frequently terms used in context with Straight Edge were selected:
“subculture”, “lifestyle”, and “ideology”.
Which concepts are behind these categorizations and are they suitable
at all in order to grasp a phenomenon like Straight Edge appropriately?
“Straight Edge: Subkultur, Ideologie, Lebensstil?” does not
only offer a detailed representation of the phenomenon of Straight Edge
but also an extensive and nevertheless compact introduction in the most
important subculture, ideology, and lifestyle bases.
Merle Mulder: Straight Edge: Subkultur, Ideologie,
Lebensstil? Münster 2010 (revised edition), 185 p., 5 ill. / tables,
coloured cover, paperback, ISBN-13/EAN: 978-3-933060-33-4, EUR 18.90
Coverdesign: Jonas Grunwald, Merle Mulder