Pirate enthusiasts who are a bit academically inclined will find this post by Lynda on her blog Give Me a Moment (23 January 2008) interesting. She has a number of interesting references, as well as a few insights into the social order of pirates.

Here's a sample:

This idea of the subversive interests me in that I am considering Bakhtin’s idea of carnival and how it influences social protest and counterculture as an area of study for my doctoral degree. I am both amused and intrigued by Hobsbawm’s and Christopher Hill’s Marxists analyses of “social banditry.” I’m only amused because the idea of socialist pirates sounds so peculiar and extreme. But Hobsbawm’s explanation that pirating evolved from the transition from “peasant economies to capitalism” and reflected a “desperate response to upheaval,” posits a new take on pirates for me, and if we consider the 1960s message music movement in conjunction with the civil rights and anti-war protests, we can definitely view pirates as 17th century versions of counter-culture rock stars.

Go Lynda!