knowledge of reality, and therefore, for practical purposes, reality itself, is intertextual: it exists only in the interrelations between all that a culture has written, spoken, visualized about it. (Fiske, 1987, 115)

We are in a universe where there is more and more information and less and less meaning. (Baudrillard 1983b, 95)

The study of subcultural style, which seem[s] at the outset to draw us back to the real world, to reunite us with “the people,” ends by merely confirming the distance between the reader and the “text,” between everyday life and the “mythologist” whom it surrounds, fascinates and finally...

The remarkable disparity of views on the state, the significance, and the future of the rave scene are akin to the complex and contradictory images of youth presented in chapter one. Not surprisingly, the emerging problem and question about research on youth culture parallels that expressed here about rave. That is,(how) can the complexity of the rave cultural phenomenon be “captured” through empirical study and theoretical discussion?Endeavouring to speak more directly about this issue/question and about the diversity of views on rave offered above, I introduce this chapter with two broad theoretical convictions that guided the study presented...

In his bookAll That Is Solid Melts into Air, Marshall Berman powerfully articulated how the interaction between individuals and structures in contemporary culture is both ambiguous and patterned – a “unity of disunity.” This is a particularly compelling observation in light of the theoretical arguments made in this book; it reminds us to be attentive to the predictable ways that youth come to be involved in subcultures and use them for negotiating and confirming their identities–while at the same time requiring us to be sensitive to the various and often unforeseen features of youth involvements within a dynamic and...

In his classic bookThe Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Erving Goffman uses the theatre as a metaphor to help describe how people play roles and present themselves in distinct ways depending on their situations and audiences. Key to this “dramaturgical” lens on social life is the notion of “impression management,” a term adopted to illustrate how people strategically manage their behaviours and appearances in the hope of impressing others. An important nuance to this framework is that people tend to alter their roles and identities as they become more familiar with and trusting of their audience, and as...

Many scholars have dealt with this fundamental tension between “individual freedom and structural constraint” by adopting a classic compromise position where individuals, whether youth or otherwise, are considered to be “relatively autonomous” or active within certain social constraints. Karl Marx’s aphorism “human beings make their own history, but not in the circumstances of their own choosing” is the clearest articulation of this position (1963, 15). Over the years there have been many attempts to provide a more sophisticated framework that bridges the structure-agency gap, including structuration theory (Giddens 1984), the negotiated order perspective (Strauss, Schatzman, et al. 1963), social network...

Although the term “community” is often used by ravers who are describing the sense of connection that is felt between those deep in the experience of the dance party – those who are “feeling the vibe” – the concept has far wider application. Authors like Benedict Anderson (1983) describe community in terms of the “imagined” connections between people who share an interest or devotion, to, for example, a country or sports team, but will never meet. Other theorists examine connections between people that transcend conventional social structural boundaries (e.g., class, gender, race, ethnicity, and age), connections that are the basis of what...

Most academics just ramble. Far too few raise a fist or a voice. Communications professors tell their students everything that’s wrong with the global media monopoly, but never a word about how to fix it. Economics professors drone on endlessly about their macroeconomic models while in the real world we live off the planet’s natural capital and the backs of future generations … Nonexperts – regular reasonable people – are disgusted by all this dithering. They already have a good idea what’s going on. They can tell by the issues their politicians choosenotto address … [by] the way their kids’...