‘the official reaction to the punk subculture, particularly the sex pistols use of foul language[…] vomiting and spitting incidents would seem to indicate that these basic taboos are no less deeply sedimented in contemporary British society’

‘Youth cultural styles may begin by issuing symbolic challenges, but they must inevitably end by establishing new sets of conventions ; by creating new commodities, new industries and rejuvenating old ones’

‘subculture is then neither simply an affirmation or a refusal, neither simply resistance against symbolic order nor straight-forward conformity with the parent culture. It is…a declaration of Independence, of otherness of alien intent, a refusal of anonymity of subordinate status. It is insubordination’

‘at the height of the Mod craze youth culture had become largely a matter of commodity selection, of publically stated taste preference: this rather than that, mod not beat, mod not rocker, mod not ted. For youths in search of an expressive medium, goods could function symbolically as ‘weapons of exclusions’

‘Quite clearly there are new forces at work here. We are witnessing the formation of new collectives, new forms of social and sexual being, new configurations of power and resistance.’

‘When adolescents, most particularity when disaffected inner city and unemployed adolescents resort to violence – symbolic and actual violence –they are playing with the only power and their disposal – the power to discomfort, the power that is to pose…to pose a threat’

Subculture is an attack on the norm, a violation of what is perceived as acceptable; a new way of doing things; a better way as Hebdige says ‘Violations of the authorized codes through which the social word is organized and experienced have considerable power to provoke and disturb’ (Hebdige 1997: p121-132) At its most primal, it is raw; it’s consuming and it’s powerful. Dick Hebdige 1983

‘Eventually a new range of commodities and commercial leisure facilities is provided to absorb the surplus of cash which working class youth is calculated to have […]a space in which youth can play with itself, a space in which youth can construct its own identities, untouched by the soiled and compromised imaginaries of the parent culture. Eventually boutiques, record shops, dance halls, discotheques, television programs, magazines, the ‘Hit Parade’ Dick Hebdige 1983