Authenticity in an insider-in ethnography of post-punk

Abstract

Authenticity is a central aim of ethnography, and an insider researcher is best placed to observe behaviour based on existing trust with their participants. As both a scholar of goth and a participant in the goth subculture, upon commencing his research Hodkinson noted his involvement in the scene as becoming ‘part of an extensive research project’ after years of participation. I have been the vocalist for 1919, an original post-punk band, since their reformation in 2014. The original post-punk era is usually considered to have taken place between 1978 and 1984, and was prolific for Yorkshire artists. However, I was born in 1990, and came of age as a music fan in the early 2000s. In simply answering an advert, I would be placed at the centre of a world that had existed before I did, and had survived through a mixture of nostalgia, reverence and advancements in information and communication technology. Hodkinson’s point of entry begs the question: how does someone like me, born in 1990, who although raised in Yorkshire was born in London, become an authentic researcher of 1980s Yorkshire? Not only that, but to be positioned as the kind of insider-in researcher – one who uses their position within a community to observe without the barriers of entry experienced by an outsider anthropologist – like Hodkinson.