Networks of Sound, Style and Subversion: The Punk and Post-Punk Worlds of Manchester, London, Liverpool and Sheffield, 1975–80 by Nick Crossley (review)

Networks of Sound, Style and Subversion: The Punk and Post-Punk Worlds of Manchester, London, Liverpool and Sheffield, 1975-80. By Nick Crossley. (Music and Society.) Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015. [xi, 268 p. ISBN 9780719088643 (hardcover), 75 [pounds sterling]; ISBN 9780719088650 (paperback), 17.99 [pounds sterling]; ISBN 9781847799920 (e book), 17.99 [pounds sterling]. ] Graphs, tables, bibliography, index. "I don't think you can explain how things happen, other than sometimes they just should. And the Sex Pistols should've happened and did. " So states Sex Pistols front man John "Johnny Rotten" Lydon in the opening scene of the documentary The Filth and the Fury (dir. by Julien Temple, New Line Home Video [2000, 2005], DVD). While the Sex Pistols most certainly happened, to date no one has come as close to explaining how as Nick Crossley in his new book Networks of Sound, Style and Subversion. In Networks, Crossley presents a sociological retelling of how punk and post-punk musical styles arose in late-1970s England. Expanding his previous work on social networks, Crossley argues that both styles were preceded and eventually popularized by intricate networks comprised of "bands, audiences, venues, managers, promoters and others. " "It was their interactions," he contends, "both competitive and cooperative, imitative and self-distinguishing . which generated what we think of as punk and post-punk music" (p. 10). Crossley is a professor of sociology at the University of Manchester, and Networks is primarily written for those in the social sciences. It is filled with elaborate charts, graphs of data, and discussions of theoretical models. It also takes its mapping of social networks literally--describing them in terms of density, number of components, and path lengths, and separately categorizing "key participants" (or "nodes") by their relative "degree," "closeness," and "betweenness" (pp. 17-18). Such mathematically-inflected prose appears throughout the book, and Crossley spends nearly as much time explaining the models being used as he does describing the people involved. This approach may be off-putting to some in the humanities; certainly the book's data-driven methodology is not for everyone. Nevertheless, Crossley's exhaustive model of how new genres are established and propagated provides a brilliant and valuable tool for any scholar interested in tracing the emergence of new musical styles. Crossley begins by laying out the fundamental question of the book: "Why and how did punk and then post-punk emerge, when, where, in the way and involving the people they did? " (p. 2). The answer, he claims, lies in "relational sociology" (p. 13)--specifically in social network analysis--which he then broadly describes. The second and third chapters present a literature review of previous sociological approaches to punk. Chapter 2 deconstructs Dick Hebdige's concept of punk as a "subculture," arguing that a sociological analysis of punk needs to be grounded in both musical aesthetics and the practice of music making itself. Building on Christopher Small's concept of "musicking" and Howard S. Becker's concept of "art worlds," Crossley suggests that it is better to conceive of punk and post-punk as "music worlds," ones formed and sustained through collective engagement with music. Chapter 3 explores six sociological interpretations of the emergence of British punk. Crossley evaluates accounts such as "punk was a response to alienation and domination on behalf of working-class youths" and "punk was a reaction to the crises (economic, political and social) of UK society in the mid 1970s" (p. 49), ultimately rejecting these explanations as either too vague or historically inconsistent. He instead proposes that punk came about due to the workings of a small, regionally-specific social network of actors motivated by and through musical practices. In the next section of the book, Crossley provides his own explanation of British punk. …