In Western societies, punk represented a benchmark for rupture towards the existing social structure while providing a soundtrack for it. So, it is in this context that we will approach the Portuguese punk considering its importance in a society engaged in relatively recent processes of democratization and modernization. Thus, we propose here to take a look at the punk from its protagonists' discourses and the text that they form. We will consider the words used by the bands in two ways: when they name themselves and their lyrics. In each case, we will deal with the self-representation issues in the light of the polarity between identity and difference: who we are, how we position ourselves, how we distinguish ourselves, what we have to say about ourselves, our time and our world; what are our values and what we have to say regarding the dominant social values; which causes move us, how we want to act, how we want the world to be. As in any other discursive self-representation, the content is not independent of the forms of expression. Therefore, the identification and dialogue questions (who is speaking, who is he or she speaking to) and the language questions (how does the speaker express, with which codes, in which forms) are also examined. Our analysis suggests that the punk discourse on identity tends to be structured by three main axes: a) cosmopolitanism, b) the radical assumption of an irreducible difference regarding social order and c) an ambivalent attitude towards politics and the political action.

The article focuses on how the Portuguese arts have dealt with the Portuguese crisis, in the years 2011-2014, when the country was subjected to a financial bailout. The approach is based on a cross-section analysis, considering the domains of literature, fine arts, visual arts and cinema, music and performing arts. It emphasizes three distinct and complementary ways through which the relation between arts and society was developed in these years. The first way is the directly political positioning of artists, through artistic works and performances. The second way is the presence of the crisis as a background of several artistic creations of this time. And the third way is the one by which the crisis projects a new light into consistent topics of the Portuguese artistic imagination, stressing the centrality of collective identity and self-reflexivity. The Portuguese case suggests how promising can be for the sociological explanation of social processes the consideration of their cultural and artistic dimensions.

This article will present a characterisation of the Portuguese punk scene between 1977 and 2014, while considering the social profiles of its protagonists. It is based on the sociological principle that the social positioning of social actors involved influences what they do, say, and feel. Their social profiling will help clarify their role in the musical scene. This approach has been deemed fundamental in interpreting youth cultures emerging postwar and the way in which they re-equated pop culture. In this article, we have two particular aims: first, establishing a portrait of the leading characters in the Portuguese punk scene through the social profiling of 214 individuals interviewed between May 2012 and October 2014; second, allowing for comparisons with other musical scenes in Portugal and/or with punk scenes in other countries. Here, we must obviously consider the social condition of these protagonists, including not only their class origin and present affiliation but also other relevant characteristics, such as gender and age. Thus, this article will explore the following topics: roles and functions within the punk scene, gender relations, age groups and the process of ageing, territorial placement-both in terms of origin and of residence, educational capital, and socio-occupational group.

In Portugal, two levels of public policy implementation are relevant: the national, under government responsibility, and the local, under the responsibility of municipalities. The importance of municipalities in defining cultural public policies has grown, given the expense and the responsibility in launching and managing cultural equipment and arts support. The growing significance of municipalities in the cultural-public-policies scene takes place along with the growing importance of culture in the context of their development policies. The two movements cannot be dissociated. This review considers some critical issues, from the perspective of academic research and planning: namely, the autonomy of local policies in a country marked by the territorial concentration of resources; the interaction between public policies and structural properties of urban areas; the suitability of municipal policies to new cultural forms, audiences, consumer practices and cultural production; and the local challenges in plans of social support, financial resources, governance and sustainability.

No abstract