Abstract

After years of substantial lack of interest, Italian academy seems to have finally introduced among its research objects the theme of youth subcultures and post-subcultures and their aesthetics and music. Comparing three recently published monographs on the subject (in particular, on punk and post-punk in the 1980s, and on contemporary hipsterism) it is possible to recognize some common theoretical assumptions that characterize this new line of inquiry: the relevance granted to the urban dimension in the processes of appropriation of transnational subcultures; the attention to the heterogeneity and internal differences in subcultures generated by different forms of appropriation; the attempt to read these phenomena in the light of broader socio-cultural issues, avoiding limiting the interest in the forms taken by subcultures and post-subcultures in our country within the boundaries of an excessively specialized field of study