"Situating an empirical case study within a wider consideration of postmodernism and cultural change, the author rejects cultural studies perspectives that attempt to 'read' subcultures as texts. Drawing on extensive interviews with people who dress in what might be deemed a stylistically unconventional manner, he seeks instead to establish whether contemporary subcultures display modern or postmodern sensibilities and forms. He argues persuasively that they do both - a stress on postmodern hyperindividualism, fluidity and fragmentation runs alongside a modernist emphasis on authenticity and underlying essence. He concludes that a Romantic libertarianism has permeated working-class culture and that the distinction between 'individualistic' middle-class countercultures and 'collectivist' working-class subcultures has been over-emphasized."--Jacket.