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Abstract
The public perceptions of clubs and drugs reveal the existence of two opposing discourses. One, an official discourse, characterizes dance events and taking drugs as spaces of excess risk, which need to be controlled and regulated. The other, as exemplified in accounts of the participants themselves, emphasizes the pleasures and importance of these activities. The dichotomous nature of the discourses is not that surprising as many researchers have noted that adult concerns with youthful practices have been witnessed many times before. What is more surprising is the extent to which a division between perspectives on and approaches to understanding raves and drug use can be found not just in the contrast between official/government approaches and dance event participants, but also within scholarly work. Scholarship on raves, the dance scenes, and club drugs can be divided into two immensely differing traditions: epidemiological and cultural studies approaches. The cultural studies approach acts as a much-needed corrective to the epidemiological research through its introduction of a focus on pleasure, subjectivity, and social context and by more fully attending to youth perspectives. However, the cultural studies scholarship, itself, has important blindspots, particularly in its underemphasis on the role of drugs within the dance and rave scenes. We will argue for a third approach that utilizes the theoretical and methodological strengths of the cultural studies approach, while combining it with perspectives that allow us to comprehend the role that drugs play within these scenes and the roles of pleasure and risk within them.
Notes
Notes
1. The National Institute on Drug Abuse's (NIDA) classification includes under the heading “club drugs” the following individual substances: ecstasy, LSD, methamphetamine, GHB, ketamine, Rohypnol. This, however, does not necessarily completely match the experiences of drug-using club goers. Our own research, for example, has found that other substances, including cocaine, poppers, and magic mushrooms, are popular within the club scene.
2. Although not all epidemiologists work within the social problems emphasis, for the purposes of this article we focus on those within the epidemiological tradition that appear most central in the club-drugs literature. We must note, though, that some epidemiologists would argue that the frequency of equating drug use with drug abuse is not an inherent tendency of epidemiology, but rather a misuse of it (Terris Citation1987, Citation1990, Citation1992; Duncan Citation1997).
3. The one city that is an exception to this was Athens, where the rave scene was heavily dominated by men (80%).
4. In noting the emphasis in epidemiology on the problematic nature of drug use, we do not wish to give the impression that issues of pleasure are completely absent in epidemiological research on drugs. See, for example, Terris (Citation1975).
5. Baudrillard dismissed “the discotheque as the lowest form of contemporary entertainment” (Thornton Citation1996, p. 1).
6. For a further discussion of these forms of control see Hunt et al. (Citation2000, Citation2002).
7. This point is also noted by Alexander (Citation2000) in her discussion of Asian gang members in the UK.
8. See, for example, Hutton (Citation2006) and Jackson (Citation2004).
9. The term comes from Hunter Thompson (Lupton Citation1999, p. 151).
10. The transgressive nature of the music can be seen in the UK government's Criminal Justice and Public Order Act (1994) which defined rave music as “music that includes sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats” (Presdee Citation2000, p. 117).
11. For a more detailed discussion of what these activities are, see Hunt and Evans (Citation2008).
12. See Ferrell et al. (Citation2001).