Punks and Skins United? The contexts of changes in relationships of punk and skinhead subculture in Czechoslovakia and Czech Republic
Abstract
The first punks appeared in the former Czechoslovakia in the late 1970s and 1980s. In the half of 1980s, the first skinheads emerged amongst punks as a kind of small and unique part of contemporary punk scene.
From these beginnings, sub-cultural ideologies of both groups were blurred and vague, in part because of the lack of information about both subcultures due to existence of ”the Iron Curtain“. Relatively harmonic relations started to radicalize and change rapidly after “the Velvet Revolution“ in 1989 leading to split of both subcultures.
At least for the first half of 1990s, both subcultures opposed each other and were perceived as adversaries. Only in the late 1990s, an apolitical current of skinheads and a section of punks started to sympathise with each other.
This has led, in some cases, to a hybridization of these subcultures. This paper will focus on the change of relations between punks and skinheads since their emergence in former Czechoslovakia until now.
On the basis of a development of mutual relationship and a process of hybridization of some parts of both subcultures, I will address the issue to what extent is the classic theoretical concept of subcultures by Hebdige an appropriate analytical frame for interpretation of the recent situation.