No Future. Punk is Dead. That is what was sung and said. Yet as we approach 50 years of punk rock, it still endures, and sometime thrives. From 'White riot' to Pussy Riot, Never Mind the Bollocks to Nevermind, DIY to never gonna die, punk rock has marked or stained-it marks or stains-our musical and cultural history and practice. Here key established writers as well as emerging scholars from around the world offer critical views on punk practice and legacy, in a timely re-evaluation of its significance as music, culture, politics, nostalgia, heritage.

The handbook looks at pre- and proto-punk forms, the 'high years' of c. 1976-84, the international spread of the music and style, punk media from films to fanzines, as well as a thread that may run through its entire history-the inspiring politics of DIY (Do It Yourself). Crossing and blurring disciplinary boundaries, it presents methodological innovations to offer new ways of understanding punk's significance.

The Oxford Handbook of Punk Rock also identifies and explores some of punk's core contradictions: its anti-war messages alongside its (often gendered) violence, its anti-racism alongside its dominant whiteness, its energy and attitudinality as a youth culture for an aging demographic, its intermittent but persistent flirtations with populism and nationalism.

George McKay is Professor of Media Studies at University of East Anglia, UK. His research interests are in popular music from jazz to punk, festivals, alternative culture and media, social movements and cultural politics, disability and music, and gardening. Among his books are Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance since the Sixties (1996), DIY Culture: Party & Protest in Nineties Britain (1998), Glastonbury (2000), Circular Breathing: The Cultural Politics of Jazz in Britain (2004), Radical Gardening: Politics, Idealism and Rebellion in the Garden (2011), and Shakin' All Over: Popular Music and Disability (2013). georgemckay.org.

Gina Arnold is a former music writer who holds a PhD. in Modern Thought & Literature from Stanford University, USA, and has taught courses in Critical Race Studies, Creative Nonfiction, Rhetoric and Media Studies departments at Stanford, San Jose State, the Evergreen State College and the University of San Francisco. She is the author of four books on popular music, including Route 666: On the Road To Nirvana (1993), Kiss This (1997), Exile In Guyville (2014) and Half A Million Strong: Rock Crowds and Power from Woodstock to Coachella (2018), and a co-editor of books on music videos and record stores.