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.