Skinhead Identity in a Local Context: Homosociality, Intimacy, and Fighter's Body

Abstract

The article draws on the project of studying a group of skinheads in a northern town of Russia to discuss practices of male bonding and forms of communication relevant for the maintenance of group identity. Special attention is paid to the ways in which skinhead’s personality is produced through regimes of rapport and intimacy, where emphasis is put on the local modifi cations of normative construction of (Nazi skinhead’s) masculinity that have been observed during the course of participant observation, in-depth interviews, and everyday communication with informants.