Critical Review 4 - Andes' “Growing Up Punk: Meaning and Commitment Careers in a Contemporary Youth Subculture"

In her article “Growing Up Punk: Meaning and Commitment Careers in a Conemporary Youth Subculture,” Linda Andes begins her discussion by attacking the constrictive nature of the pre-disposed notion of commitment to a subculture. She argues that commitment implies the pursuit of a single ideal specific to the particular subculture, with commitment measured by the individual proximity to this ideal. She goes on to suggest that commitment allows for much greater diversity, as members of subcultures often express themselves uniquely.

            My contention with her article is that Andes seems to contradict her postulation of diversity within subcultures. She outlines a three-step process by which people become punks, and while she admits the subjectivity of what it is to be a punk vs. a poseur, the fact that she has a graph of the punk timeline seems to go against her argument that subcultural members should not be confined to the likes of a graph. How much generalization and reduction is implicit in the study of subcultures that more often than not are heterogeneous?