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Theory & Readings - Coggle Diagram
Theory & Readings
Thornton (1995) Club Cultures
how print press played a role in advertising rave culture through its coverage
Dance crowds tend to be municipal, regional and national. Dance styles need to be embodied rather than just bought
Club cultures are taste cultures - shared taste in music, media consumption, and preference for people with similar tastes to themselves
Describes rave as a type of club culture
Moral panic stories have the effect of certifying transgression and legitimizing youth cultures - approving reports are the subcultural kiss of death
Subcultural capital - being in the know, using current slang, performing latest dance moves
Subcultural capital can be converted into cultural capital and therefore economic capital, but it is not as class-bound as cultural capital
Admissions to dance events are higher than sporting events, cinemas and all the live arts combined
The value of the rave market was calculated to be £1.8 billion in 1993)
For British youth, going to a dance club is a rite of passage which marks adolescent independence and freedom to stay out late beyond the neighbourhood
Alcohol is used to symbolise the achievement of adult status and drugs are used to signify rejection of adult culture
Raves were enveloped in discourses of utopian egalitarianism, no door policies, welcomed everybody from all walks of life under the hypnotic beat
The discotheque/rave/club regularly reinvented itself to maintain an eternal youth and to obfuscate dated relations to class cultures - could be why it has lasted for so long
Raves add the pilgrimage, the quest for the location, to extend the ritualistic passage
Raver Profile from her Resarch
Mostly same sex groups wear casual clothes and casual expressions
Acid house uniform 'tshirts, baggy jeans, kicker boots'
White and working class, 'beautiful'
Entirely black crew of bouncers
Soft drinks and taking drugs (MDMA, coke)
All male line up of DJs
18-22
thick black eyeliner, pale lipstick
Individual ravers are part of one crowd, then another, then another, the grow out of going dancing altogether
Music is characterised by fast turnover of singles, artists and genres - club culture is faddish and fragmented
Crowds are local
Most clubbers see themselves as outside and in opposition to the mainstream
Music, performers and tastes may change but social relationships inside the dance hall stay unchanged
1989 - second wave of media inspired, sheep-like acid house fans called 'ACID TEDS' - travel in same sex mobs, support football teams, wear kicker boots and be 'out of their heads' - white, hetereosexual and working class
Dancing is the only out-of-home leisure activity that women engage with more than men - men are 10 times more likely to attend a sporting event
Men see mainstream as a negative label but women see it as just meaning popular
Factors determining who congrefates where: sexuality, taste in music
We listen to and enjoy the same music that is listened to by other people we like or identify with - next to taste in food, taste in music is the most ingrained
Media is inextricably involved in the meaning and organisation of youth subculture - it does not just represent but participate in the assembly and development of music cultures
Subcultural capital maintains its worth as long as it flows through channels of communication which are restricted eg carefully circulating flyers
Hebdige (1979) Subculture: The Meaning of Style (Punk culture)
Punk culture - heatwave of summer 1976 - born out of a combination of diverse and superficially incompatible musical traditions
Clothing style - safety pins, quiffs, leather jackets, plimsolls, paka macs, moddy crops, vivid socks, bovver boots, plastic clothes pegs, bondage straps, string
Apocalypse was in the air - post war
Hipsters, beats and teddy boys
Subcultures grow out of other subcultures - skinheads grew out of reggae
The emergence of a spectacular subculture is invariably accompanies by a wave of hysteria in the press
A subculture is concerned first and foremost with consumption - it operates exclusively in the leisure sphere
Innovations which signify subculture are translated into commodities and made generally available, they are removed from private contexts by entrepreneurs and big fashion interests who produce on a mass scale, making them public property and a profitable merchandise
Style as intentional communication
Subcultural style = dress, dance, argot, music etc
Subcultures reposition and recontextualise commodities by suberting their conventional uses and inventing new ones, and opens up to new covertly oppositional readings
Subculltures as cultures of conspicuous consumption - even when they conspicuously refuse certain types of consumption
Style as bricolage, style as a signifying practice
Punks had their own 'fanzines' eg. sniffin glue
Style manifests culture in a broader sense, as a system of communication, form of expression and representation - coded exchanges of reciprocal messages
Subcultural deviance is rendered explicable, 'secret' objects of style are put on display in every high street boutique - it is stripped of its wholesome connotations and the style becomes fit for the public
Subculture as a form of resistance in which experienced contradictions and objections to this ruling ideology are obliquely represented in style
Dress and Identity - Heavy Rock (Chaney and Goulding, 2015)
Symbolic products can be used to express relationships with reference groups, indicate status, age, gender, ethnicity and culture
Extraordinary consumption or experiences = more intense, positive and enjoyable - escape the mundane
Ritual = separation from everyday, transition between the two worlds, and incorporation back into the mundane
Dress may be used symbolically as an identity device which suggests high involvement on the part of consumers
Dress communicates how consumers see themselves and how they want to be seen by others
In a sanitised world where opportunities to release stress and express emotions are rate, consumers may look to engage in extraordinary consumption eg. attending festivals. Consumers invest and create significant meanings through this which are highly symbolic and ritualistic giving rise to a channelling of emotions
Dress helps consumers to deal with identity fragmentation and symbolically materialise the temporary shift in identity
Material objects help consumers transform themselves, operationalise rituals, are rich in meaning and have ritual value
The festival is special while the non-festival is ordinary - a 'festival look' defines participation
Rock festivals probably rely more on dress as a process of shifting the self from one state of being to another, whereas raves do not rely so heavily on dress but consumers still experience this shift of leaving the mundane behind
The abandonment of work-related clothes in favour of subcultural dress carries distinct meanings of release and separation (Tian and Belk, 2005)
Social links and sharing with other festival-goers are central dimensions for all participants
Communitas - spontaneous and unstructured community of people experiencing emotions together (Turner, 1969)
Music and dance facilitates its own kind of performativity through movement, layering and styling
Clothes and costume are not only an identity device, they are also a means of signaling subcultural capital and position in the social hierarchy, or a form of moral superiority
Colours and Scarves (Derbaix and Decrop, 2011)
Colours and Scarves are connected with four major consumption functions: identification, socialisation, expression and sacralisation
Consuming paraphernalia supports the creation and expression of private and collective identities, and helps fans to transcend their existence
Temporary fan, local fan, devoted fan, fanatical fans
In-group favouritism and out-group derogation
Unrealistic optimism - tendency of group members to anticipate potential rewards of belonging to group to outweigh the predicted costs, even if predictions are unrealistic
Commitment and perserverence are the major characeristics of football fans - they will size any occasion to support their team
The consumption of paraphernalia does not always end once football activities are over but sometimes extends in profane every day life (going to pub, school, work) and in more sacred moments (wedding)
Acquisition of football related items is interpreted as a transition towards a new life of acquisition of a new identity
Football plays a socialisation role
Colours and scarves play an expressive function - some fans even have team-related tattoos on their body
For many, colours and scarves represent scared objects that they try to preserve as long as possible - they are proof of their commitment to the team
Possession and consumption of colours and scarves contributes to the creation of the private self through devotion, differentiation (from other teams), assimilation, singularisation,
Material possessions are used as a way of connectedness between consumers (fans) and products (stars)
Consumers are what they consume, and consume what they are (Schau, 2000)
Stanley Cohen - moral panics
Mods and Rockers paper (1972, 2002)
One of the most recurrent types of moral panic in Britain since the war has been associated with the emergence of various forms of youth culture (almost exclusively working class, recently middle class or student based)
Groups such as mods and rockers have occupied a constant position as folk devils
These deviant groups create a moral panic through their representation in the media
Bahktin (1941) Carnivalesque Theory
Four Categories define the carnivalesque
the familiar and free interaction between people
eccentric behaviour where behaviour usually considered unacceotable is welcomed and accepted
carnivalesque missalliances -disintegration of categories of distinction as people from across the social spectrum mix in an atmosphere of equality
the sacrilegious - profanities are excused and forgiven
Thornton (1995) - recognises that the moral panic concepts established by Cohen and Hebdige still have relevance in the media attention given to rave
A tabloid front page, however distorted, is frequently a self-fulfilling prophecy, it can turn the most ephemeral fad into a lasting development
Will Earheart (1924) wrote about how Jazz represents in its convulsive twitching, hiccoughing rhythms, the abdication of control by the central nervous system - the brain
Demonised jazz music as the scene was regarded as a threat to order and to the individual - comments not dissimilar to reportage on early rave culture - rave has become normalised - not as much as Jazz music but can we get there??
Goulding Shankar and Elliot (2002)
Identity fragmentation on the clubbing scene enables expression of different identities relating to the working week or rave weekends
Test Bakhtins carnivalesque theory - people are just raving for ephemeral reasons - weekend pleasure?? Hedonism? is it political or apolitical?? this will help us identify whether we can call it a subculture in accordance to some theories
Vannini and Williams (2009) authenticity centres on ideology and commitment to a given subcultural practice
Schouten and McAlexander (1995) Harley Davidson biker subculture
McRobbie (1991) - dancing offers possibilities of creative expression for girls and women in either place (respectable city discos or subcultural alternatives), gender poses substantial complications to these distinctions
Mintel (1988) in UK youth culture, if it exists at all, it is made up of a highly diverse mix of subcultures
David Marshal??
Lynch (2006) the decline of organised religion and the search for alternative spiritual experiences through such forms as music
De Nora (1999) music as a source of social agency, heightened energy, ongoing identity work and a scaffold for self- construction
Olaveson - raves techniques and practices of connectedness demonstrate instances of syncretic ritualising. Rave as a new religious movement, adaptive to the apparent meaningless of consumer culture