Kevin Dunn has produced a very good and much-needed book which covers punk not only around the world but also at different points over the last 40 years. It will be valuable to researchers on punk because it covers so many different sub-genres: anarcho-punk, pop punk, straight edge and so forth. It could be the last word on research in punk except that, to my mind, a question lingers in regards to the question of the political importance of this ‘genre’ (if that is the right word; subculture?): I am not sure that Dunn has the story straight on this question, for reasons which I shall explain shortly.

Firstly, though, I should discuss the more positive sides of the book. Principal amongst these, I think, is the ‘global’ overview which is suggested by the title. Dunn reveals that punk scenes have proliferated not only in North American and Europe but also in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and South America: across the world, in short. Indonesia is credibly claimed as having ‘the largest punk community in all of Asia, if not the world’ (p. 25). Such information may come as a surprise even to those who thought they had a reasonably good knowledge of punk. Casual observers, meanwhile, will find much to learn here; and any lingering minority who still believe that punk is something that started and finished in the UK between c.1976 and 1978 will be finally disabused of their ignorance. Michael Azerrad's erroneous idea that a punk underground becomes untenable after Nirvana is firmly dismissed (p. 136).

Punk, as Dunn shows, has persisted for 40 years. In Europe and North America, it never stopped developing and throwing forth new sub-genres. Some of these will be known by many readers: riot grrrl, straight-edge and such like. Others, however, are less commonly talked about in academia and beyond: homocore, crust and even (surprisingly enough, given its longevity) anarcho-punk. Dunn ably guides the reader through these sub-genres, drawing our attention to differing tendencies and impetuses. Wherever possible, he avoids the most obvious examples; for example, in the chapter on local scenes we are given snapshots of 1970s punk in Belfast, 1980s punk in Eastern Europe and 1990s/2000s punk in Indonesia rather than focussing on, say, CBGBs or Gilman Street. The strategy pays off, I think; Dunn amasses evidence that shows unquestionably that punk has had significant longevity as well as a global reach.

There are some strengths to the way the political character of punk is handled, also. It is helpful, for example, that Dunn acknowledges the existence of right-wing punks including neo-Nazis (p. 18) and I strongly agree that ‘Informal circuits of exchange are the backbone of the global DIY punk community’ (p. 106). These informal circuits are politically and culturally interesting: through them, like-minded punks can support themselves and each other in ways that challenge the dominant trends of contemporary capitalism to an identifiable extent. The book accounts for these challenges in detail, showing that punk's repeated re-births in small towns across the world are often the product of mutual and inter-connecting support systems combined with particular individuals in particular situations deciding, essentially, ‘let's just do it!’ The ‘it’ here could be starting a band, but Dunn also makes space for chapters on record labels and (fan)zines, those less-celebrated contributors to the punk tradition which sometimes don't receive the attention they deserve. Global Punk gives fair coverage to the famous names of punk – Ian MacKaye (Minor Threat/Dischord/Fugazi), for example, an interview with whom provides the prologue to the book. However, some of my favourite parts were the coverage of more obscure characters and bands, such as Stevie Stiletto (pp. 28–32) of whom, admittedly, even I as a devoted punk record collector had never heard. The account of the Oi Polloi! gig (p. 221) is also very interesting, demonstrating the commitment to inclusivity and collective release which is generally so important to punk.

What, then, is my reservation regarding Dunn's treatment of the political question? In short, I suspect that punk bands and fans often have far more interest in and eagerness for actual revolutionary change than Global Punk credits them for. Dunn is critical enough to at least find it ‘doubtful’ that listening to records and wearing t-shirts can be especially ‘radical’ but this limitation does not seem to concern him: ‘the struggle is a process, not a destination’ and, therefore, all we need do is ‘keep striving’ (p. 58). He repeatedly insists that punk's message is its medium, by which he seems to mean that the music culture in question is the whole point; the explicitly and vehemently anti-establishment lyrics one typically finds in anarcho-punk are merely ‘empty rhetoric and posturing’ (p. 222). I am not convinced that this is correct; we could point, for example, to not only animal rights activism but also other forms of direct action which punk bands and fans from the ‘anarcho’ scene are commonly involved in. Dunn may see a ‘political potential of the middle ground’ (p. 220) but it is a fact that many punks are more inclined towards the extremes (left, right and sometimes an extremely provocative mix of the two).

Global Punk’s author makes it clear that he doesn't really believe in revolution, preferring the ‘resistance and rebellion’ he mentions in his title. His scare quotes in regards to ‘understanding “revolution” (such as it is) as an ongoing, open-ended process’ (p. 220) reflect his overall cynicism on this score. Isn't an ongoing ‘resistance’ which is open at both ends (the past and the future, that is, presumably) rather useless? Not, one supposes, if the medium is the message; not, that is, if the point of doing punk is to do punk. In Dunn's view, there is no need to do more than this: he is cynical about those who want to ‘actually bring about the revolutionary change that [zine writers and punk bands] write and sing about’ because such ‘romantic notions’ forget that ‘culture doesn't work like that’ (p. 195). If Dunn is right that culture and revolutionary potential are mutually exclusive, a great deal of world-renowned scholarship will need to be binned; Raymond Williams springs immediately to mind.

Dunn is entitled to his position and I certainly agree that punk is great when ‘people are knocked out of a trance’ (p. 195). I just don't think that this is the maximal limit as to how ‘success should be measured’ (p. 195) and I would contend that many punks think the same; many, such as Penny Rimbaud, would dispute that punk ‘already has’ changed the world and that ‘it does every day’ at ‘global levels’ (p. 225). Perhaps most punks ‘are not interested in the detailed planning of a new society’ (p. 223), but it is a fact that some punks have been led by punk into theoretical consideration of precisely such planning (some of these, indeed, can be found in the bibliography of Global Punk). If punks can rarely be found ‘strategizing on how to bring down the government’ (p. 85), this does not mean that the non-strategising punks wouldn't like it if it actually happened (as Dunn indeed hints, p. 85).

The point is, punk culture encourages punks to think and, in some punk songs and zines, to actively behave in revolutionary ways. Stephen Duncombe's (Reference Duncombe1997) punk-invoking study of zines shows ‘cynicism’ according to Dunn because it finds a purely rhetorical resistance ‘incomplete’ (Dunn, p. 195). On my reading, however, the fact that Duncombe demands more – all the way up to revolutionary social change – is a highly positive estimation of the potential consequences to which punk (in the future) could contribute. In my view, it is Dunn who is cynical, with his approving quotation of a punk song's claim that ‘revolution isn't possible’ (p. 91).

I have to add that his thinking is sometimes contradictory and/or questionable. It is confusing to read that ‘It is impossible to be outside of [capitalism]’ and that ‘DIY punk is shot through with contradictions’ (pp. 110–11) – statements with which I agree – only to subsequently be told of an ‘anti-capitalist business model’ (p. 129) as if such a thing were possible. Zines are ‘outside … capitalist relations of exchange’ (192), we are told, a few pages after learning that two of the most influential zines of the last 20 years went out of business owing to mishandling by larger distribution businesses. His idea of ‘disalienation’ is explicitly linked to Marx's ideas (p. 27), but his anti-teleological standpoint could not be less Marxist. As regards the tension between the individual and the collective (the base problem which has beset political philosophy for centuries, that is), ‘there isn't one’ (p. 220) Dunn baldly claims. He tells us repeatedly that ‘either/or’ should be avoided and then attempts to refute Duncombe's argument that punk's anti-establishment rhetoric ties it to the thing which punk would like to negate (a thoroughly Hegelian way of thinking, of course) by arguing that ‘dominant culture is the negative’ whereas ‘oppositional identity is a positive response’ (p. 57).

Such a reading of the problem – punk is positive, dominant culture is negative, essentially – is a pretty unconvincing either/or argument, in fact. Some readers (critical thinkers who are not punks, as well as punks who desire something more than just resistance and rebellion) will not be convinced by the book as a whole and, therefore, I repeat that this monograph is not the last word on punk. Nevertheless, it offers an enjoyable and interesting read which researchers can build upon in the future; I imagine, also, that many less- or non-academic readers could profit from the text, which seems to be a (laudable) ambition of Dunn's.