STRAIGHT EDGE

 Straight edge is a clean-living youth movement that emerged from the punk rock subculture in the early 1980s. Its basic tenets promote a drug free, tobacco free, and sexually responsible lifestyle tenets that, on the surface, seem counter to those typical of teenage rebellion. For many straight-edge kids, however, being clean and sober was (and still is) the ultimate expression of resistance resistance to the consumerist and self indulgent ethos that defines mainstream U.S. culture.

In this first in-depth sociological analysis of the movement, Ross Haenfler follows the lives of dozens of straight edge youths, showing how for these young men and women, and thousands of others worldwide, the adoption of the straight-edge doctrine as a way to better themselves evolved into a broader mission to improve the world in which they live. Straight edge used to signify a rejection of mind-altering substances and promiscuous sex, yet modern interpretations include a vegetarian (or vegan) diet and an increasing involvement in environmental and political issues.

Condition: New

Rutgers University Press, 2006

264 pages

Softcover

15.24 x 1.52 x 22.86 cm