Rethinking ‘collective effervescence,’ post-COVID-19: what Japanese punks can teach us about crowd control

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper examines the case of grassroots-level live music in Japan during the height of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Despite imposing restrictions on cross-border movement, the Japanese government refrained from implementing the ‘lockdowns’ seen elsewhere. As such, this study provides an opportunity to examine what happens when infection prevention measures are delegated to the community level. Using qualitative data gathered from ethnographic fieldwork, this case study of punks in the northern city of Sapporo affords a ‘real life’ view of live music practice under such circumstances. Given that governments and policy makers are keen to avoid ‘lockdowns’ or similar measures should there be a future pandemic, a consideration of what actually happens in such a case becomes imperative. Qualitative analysis of this ethnographic case study reveals that whether an audience is able to sufficiently ‘control’ themselves in order to follow infection prevention guidelines is dependent on the social trajectories of those within it, and to what extent they are willing and able to employ their personal (sub)cultural capital to influence the emergent event. For policy makers, this suggests that any ‘community-level’ approach to infection prevention necessitates engagement with the group in question that is simultaneously ‘bottom up’ and ‘top down.’