[Dancecult-l] Fight, Flight, or Chill: Subcultures, Youth and Rave into the Twenty-First Century by Brian Wilson

[Graham St John]

Recent book from McGill-Queens University Press:


Fight, Flight, or Chill: Subcultures, Youth, and Rave into the 
Twenty-First Century
Brian Wilson
http://www.mqup.mcgill.ca/book.php?bookid=1957

Rave is one of the first distinct and significant youth subcultures 
to emerge since the early days of punk rockers and skinheads. A 
middle-class culture renowned for drug use, computer-generated 
"techno" music, and all-night dance parties, rave has been described 
as everything from a drug cult to a neo-hippie community. Brian 
Wilson uses his ethnographic research on rave during the mid and late 
1990s in Southern Ontario to discuss the ways in which young people 
participate in social and cultural life at the turn of the millennium.

Fight, Flight or Chill explores the extent to which raver youths' 
experiences are constrained or determined by individualistic, 
high-tech, mass-mediated Western culture in which alienated and 
unfulfilled youth are apparently more at-risk for escapist and 
thrill-seeking behaviours. Wilson considers how raver youth 
creatively and proactively subvert these constraints in novel and 
empowering ways - from political activism to symbolic and stylistic 
expressions of resistance to community-building efforts. He also 
discusses the globalization and political economy of rave and youth 
culture and examines the ideologies that underlie simple solutions to 
the complex concerns over young people today.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments | vii
Introduction
1 Youth Culture, Complexity, and Rave | 3

PART ONE
Rave Culture, History, and Social Experience
2 From New York to Ibiza to Britain to Toronto: Rave Histories, 
Contexts, and Panics | 36
3 Doctrines, Disappointments, and Dance: Perspectives and Activities 
in the Rave Scene | 72
4 Making Impressions, Making Investments: Identities, Relationships, 
Commitments, and Rave | 106

PART TWO
Reading Rave, Interpreting Youth Culture
5 Fight, Flight, or Chill: Reconsidering Youth Subcultural Resistance | 128
6 Marketing "The Vibe": Community, Nostalgia, Political Economy, and Rave | 156

Conclusion
7 Raise a Fist? Reflections on Theory and Practice | 174
Appendix 1: Comments about Method and Theory | 182
References | 193
Index | 211
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