INTRODUCTION

For nearly two decades, the skinhead subculture has been nearly universally associated with the most vile manifestations of racism and violence imaginable. As evidenced by popular culture(1) , racism is a fundamental component of the mainstream definition of skinhead. It may come as a surprise, then, to discover that not only did the skinhead subculture emerge from uniquely multicultural and multiracial origins and not only are the overwhelming majority of skinheads non-racists, but that a very significant proportion of participants in the skinhead subculture actively identify themselves as anti-racist.

One such grouping of anti-racist skinheads was the Montréal chapter of Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice (SHARP). Montréal's first SHARP chapter began in 1991 and folded approximately two years later. In 1996, Montréal racist skinheads began a protracted campaign of ambushes and armed assaults on non- and anti-racist skinheads, culminating in a series of "bar raids" in the summer of 1998 that sent over thirty people to emergency rooms. In response to this threat, SHARP Montréal reformed in late July 1998 (SHARP Montréal, 1999) and consisted of a fairly stable group of around two dozen young men and women.

As members of an anti-racist skinhead gang(2) SHARP members establish their identities as such in both mainstream and subcultural social settings, and, in doing so, enact dual facets of their identities &endash; as skinheads and as anti-racist skinheads. They establish and maintain both in two crucial areas. On a level of subcultural interaction, their identity boundaries are established through a dramaturgical process involving the skinhead bricolage and set interactional scripts. Through the employment of violence, and particularly collective forms of violence, the boundaries of identity for the group are clearly demarcated. Within both the skinhead subculture and the punk subculture it is embedded within, SHARP members adopt a policing role in which they attempt to label and punish racists as deviants, utilizing both ritualized interactional processes and ritualized forms of violence to accomplish this goal.

This study concerns how members of SHARP Montréal deploy their interactions in the broader social world and, more importantly, within the smaller subcultural social space they occupy, in order to define who they are and who they are not.

(1) Any number of television programs (Law & Order), movies (American History X, Crimson River, Romper Stomper) and even video games (Sony Playstation 2's Soldier Of Fortune and State Of Emergency) depict skinheads as being synonomous with racists.

(2) Whether or not SHARP Montréal constitute a "gang" is subject to an important definitional debate, given the consequences that can arise when one's group comes to be labelled as such. Using Christensen's gang identification criteria (1994: 13), SHARP Montréal lacks the territorial claims that comprise being a gang, but could arguably still fall under the label "gang" due to their similar appearance and manner, their high degree of in-group interaction, and the criminal acts many members have been involved in. However, Hamm (1993: 61-62) cautions against defining skinheads as gang members, because they "do not conform to the classic definition of a street gang" insofar as their use of violence separates them from those of most gangs. Hebdige (1979: 180-181) notes that the issue is not clear-cut: gangs can and do exist within youth subcultures, and the two terms "are virtually synonymous in the popular mythology."