Abstract
This chapter discusses the approach (grounded theory) and the method (life stories) adopted for the empirical research the books draws on. It also clarifies the main methodological choices adopted, discussing issues of sampling, conduction of the interviews and selection of the excerpts of empirical materials published in the book. After a presentation of the interviewees, the chapter discusses two of the three main concepts adopted for the analysis: social practices, derived from the second generation of practice theories, and in particular from the work of Theodore Schatzki; and enactment, derived from the field of Science and Technology Studies, and in particular from the work of John Law and Marianne Elisabeth Lien. Finally, it clarifies how the different enactments of dark that could be observed in Milan in the 1980s emerged from the bundle of practices in which subcultural participation unfolded, each bundle being composed by three different kind of practices: practices deemed of key relevance to subcultural participation in all the enactments; practices deemed of key relevance to subcultural participation in one specific enactment; and practices not deemed of key relevance to subcultural participation, and yet shaped by it.
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Notes
- 1.
Inspired by the work of the psychologist Carl Rogers (1951), when applied to the life story method, these techniques consist basically in orienting the subjects’ storytelling on themes of interest using only the speakers’ own words to summarise their narrative, or to request clarifications. These techniques aim at avoiding to introduce in the narrative themes or concepts that are alien to the interviewees.
- 2.
In Denzin’s terms (1978: 218), these are “topical life histories”.
- 3.
For more details on our sample, see Sect. 1.2.
- 4.
Our interpretation was also not refused by any of the 20 non-Milanese readers of the book we reached with a questionnaire in order to obtain some insights on the generalisability of our results outside the Milanese context.
- 5.
Together with pictures, in occasion of the interviews we also collected copies of fanzines and other cultural artefacts belonging to the interviewees.
- 6.
All the interviewees reviewed and approved their excerpts after they were edited for readability, and before their translation.
- 7.
See Sect. 6.4.
- 8.
The following excerpt, more extensively presented in Chap. 6, clarifies this apparent contradiction between the feeling of a shared identity and the perceived distance from some life conducts: “I remember seeing groups of darks drunk at three o’clock in the afternoon near the Colonne di San Lorenzo. I never liked that. I was not a prig: I just didn’t see the ‘dark path’ as compatible with certain behaviour. I’d say, ‘Look at these guys, they’re making all of us lose face!” (Donatella Bartolomei). The drunk darks are accepted as being part of ‘us’, and yet they are criticised for the way they enact dark in public.
- 9.
For an example of the analysis of the relationship between material arrangements and the practice of live gigs, in light of conflicts in canon between Milanese anarcho-punks and Creature Simili, see Chap. 3.
- 10.
The work of Pierre Bourdieu represents the main reference for the few attempts in establishing practice theory for the analysis of subculturalists’ doings. These attempts generally consist in the appropriation of one of the key concepts of the Bourdueisian theoretical framework, like habitus (Powell 2007; Driver 2011; Branch 2014), field (O’Connor 2008, 2016) or (sub -)cultural capital (Thornton 1995; Brill 2007; Jensen 2006).
- 11.
On the opportunity, and yet the difficulty of addressing the embodied and affective dimensions of subcultural practices, see Hodkinson (2012).
- 12.
- 13.
Among others, Kirsty Lohman (2017) gives the word ‘social’ in ‘social practices’ the meaning of ‘implying socialization with other members’, and distinguishes punk’s social and individual practices.
- 14.
For Thornton, subcultural capital is the ideological resource through which subculturalists acquire a respected status in a scene.
- 15.
It’s the reason why we have not considered it a fourth, distinct enactment of dark.
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Tosoni, S., Zuccalà, E. (2020). The Research: Methods and Methodology. In: Italian Goth Subculture . Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39811-8_2
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