The emergence of punk in Britain (1976–1978) is recalled and documented as a moment of rebellion, one in which youth culture was seen to challenge accepted values and forms of behaviour, and to set in motion a new kind of cultural politics. In this article we do two things. First, we ask how far punk's challenge extended. Did it penetrate those political, cultural and social elites against which it set itself? And second, we reflect on the problem of recovering the history and politics of moments such as punk, and on the value of archives to such exercises in recuperation. In pursuit of both tasks, we make use of a wide range of historical sources, relying on these rather than on retrospective oral or autobiographical accounts. We set our findings against the narratives offered by both subcultural and mainstream histories of punk. We show how punk's impact on elites can be detected in the rhetoric of the popular media, and in aspects of the practice of local government and the police. Its impact on other elites (e.g. central government or the monarchy) is much harder to discern. These insights are important both for enriching our understanding of the political significance of punk and for how we approach the historical record left by popular music.

中文翻译：

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“它会威胁到现状吗？” 精英对英国朋克的反应，1976-1978

朋克在英国的出现（1976-1978）被回顾和记录为一个反叛的时刻，在这个时刻，青年文化被视为挑战公认的价值观和行为形式，并启动了一种新的文化政治。在这篇文章中，我们做了两件事。首先，我们要问朋克的挑战延伸到什么程度。它是否渗透到它所针对的那些政治、文化和社会精英？其次，我们反思了恢复朋克等时刻的历史和政治的问题，以及档案对这种恢复活动的价值。为了完成这两项任务，我们利用了广泛的历史资料，依靠这些而不是回顾性的口头或自传记述。我们将我们的发现与亚文化和主流朋克历史提供的叙述相比较。我们展示了朋克对精英的影响是如何从大众媒体的言论以及地方政府和警察的实践中发现的。它对其他精英（例如中央政府或君主制）的影响更难辨别。这些见解对于丰富我们对朋克的政治意义的理解以及我们如何处理流行音乐留下的历史记录都很重要。