An authentic sociology of punk, written on the spot at the peak of the movement, in 1979, since become a cult book, which has inspired the American essayist Greil Marcus. This founding text of "cultural studies" combines poetic writing, field investigation and theoretical developments in the service of an atypical project: an authentic punk sociology, written on the spot, at the peak of the movement, in 1979. Applying concepts derived from linguistics to subcultures, Hebdige innovatively describes social conflicts as struggles for the appropriation and reinterpretation of signs, in what he calls, following Umberto Eco, an " semiotic guerrilla ". Musics, clothes, slangs, rituals and haircuts form significant outfits. Always threatened with market recovery, these "styles" appear as instruments of confrontation and resistance. The British youth of the 1970s was the melting pot of punk and "glam-rock" - with the figure of Bowie - but also a powerful Rasta subculture imported into England by Caribbean migrants. To understand the emergence of punk, we must grasp the importance of these dialogues, by interposed styles, between British youth and immigrants: the subcultures respond to each other in a complex game of exchange, travel and quotes. With a remarkable advance on the state of intellectual debate in France, this essential work provides conceptual tools to better understand the great circulation of signs and identities that crosses youth subcultures in a postcolonial situation.