- Hardcover: 224 pages
- Publisher: Verso Books (3 May 1996)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1859849083
- ISBN-13: 978-1859849088
- Product Dimensions: 22.8 x 20.7 x 2.1 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 4,597,299 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
| |||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"The secret history of the last two decades" - Jon Savage "This is the most authoritative and compelling book on DIY culture I've come across." - Jeremy Cunningham, The Levellers
Product Description
Welcome to the social and environmental devastation that is Britain in 1996. Welcome to interchangeable political parties and their chattering media jesters pulling together to make Johnny Rotten's dream come true: no future. But despite their best efforts, fear, cynicism and the National Lottery aren't the whole story. Protest hasn't disappeared during the last twenty years, and nor have solidarity and imagination. They have simply taken new forms; they have moved out and moved on. More and more people, young people especially, are making a virtue of necessity and living outside Britain's rotting institutional fabric. Travellers, tribes, ravers or squatters, direct-action protesters of every kind, DIYers. This book is the first attempt to write their history, to explore and celebrate their endlessly creative senselessness. George McKay looks back at the hippies of the sixties and punks of the seventies, and shows hot their legacies have been transformed into what he calls cultures of resistance. His journey through the undergrounds of the last two decades takes us from the Windsor Free Festival of 1972 to the Castlemorton Free Rave Megaparty exactly twenty years later, from the anarchopunk band Crass via Teepee Valley and Glastonbury to today's ever-intensifying anti-road protests, and to the widespread opposition to the Criminal Justice Act. Drawing on fanzines and free papers, record lyrics, interviews and diaries, Senseless Acts of Beauty gives a vivid, insider account of countercultures, networks and movements that until now have remained largely unrecorded. At the same time, George McKay analyses their effects, and gives his own answers to the questions they pose: what are their politics, their aspirations, their consequences? One thing is certain, he argues: if there is resistance anywhere in Britain today, then it is here, in the beat-up buses, beleaguered squats and tree-top barricades, that we should start to look for it.
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
if you were there you will love the book..if you was'nt there you will wish you were..great read..
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Picked it up at a friends house and couldn't stop reading it until he pried it out of my clammy hands!
If you are interested in alternative living, rave, punk, traveling the 80's and all the politics that go with these things then this is a book you'll love.
Top marks
If you are interested in alternative living, rave, punk, traveling the 80's and all the politics that go with these things then this is a book you'll love.
Top marks
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
- Books > History > Britain & Ireland
- Books > History > Cultural History
- Books > History > Social & Economic History > Protest & Reform
- Books > Science & Nature > History & Philosophy > Reference
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Government & Politics > Civil Liberties & Political Activism > Protest Movements
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Philosophy
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Social Sciences > Anthropology > Social & Cultural
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
