Beyond Subculture and Post-subculture? The Case of Virtual Psytrance

Abstract

Recently, there has been an engaging debate in youth studies between the efficacy of subcultural theory versus post-subcultural perspectives. While positions have ranged from reinterpretation and alternatives to youth subcultural theory, to a return to some form of subcultural analysis and emphasis on leisure inequalities, equally there have been both critiques and defences of post-subcultural and postmodernist perspective emphasising the fragmented and transitory aspects of youth styles. However, much of the debate here has taken place on the terrain of theory and critique/counter-critique, rather than in terms of empirical studies. This article presents an exploration of the global subculture of ‘virtual psytrancers’ (people who visit psytrance dance style discussion forums on the Internet), while also investigating the validity of both subcutural and post-subcultural theories. A total of 569 virtual psytrancers from over 40 countries were involved in an Internet-based, online-questionnaire-based study, which assessed the shared attitudes, global spaces and international connections of the group. The findings presented here reject a simple theoretical dichotomy, and challenge the notion that subcultures must be primarily local (rather than global/virtual) and singularly class-based, as well as simultaneously refuting postmodern conceptions that global youth styles are, by definition, depthless, transitory and internally fragmented.

Notes

1. We would like to thank the two anonymous referees for their comments and the editorial board for their various suggestions for improvement.

2. We use the term ‘unique’ here to point out that while there have been some large-scale studies of young people's labour market and educational experiences, there have been far fewer in-depth studies of global youth culture, which involve young people from so many different countries, including developing countries (although for starters see Skelton and Valentine, 1998).

3. As our focus here is on psytrance, we do not have the space to delve into this history of hippies in Goa (although see Odzer 1995), or to discuss the wider literature on hippy and DiY counter-cultures (although see Miles 2005; and, generally, McKay 1996).

4. Again, it is not our purpose here to discuss the impact of rave culture specifically (although see Redhead 1993; Thornton 1995; McKay 1998; Reynolds 1998; Rietveld 1998), or clubbing generally (although for starters see Malbon 1999; Jackson 2004).

5. Much of the information in this paragraph comes from various participant observations of psytrance events in Goa and in Europe by the first author of the paper in the late 1990s.

6. Again it is not our purpose here to ‘exhaustively’ cover the debate on subculture and post-subculture, but to set out those aspects of the debate that help to contextualise our data on psytrance that follow. For a thorough-going discussion of the debate see Blackman (2005), Hesmondhalgh (2005), Bennett (2005), and MacDonald and Shildrick (2006).

7. The use of the term ‘intermingling’ here should not imply that class leisure fractions do not continue to exist, just that with globalisation and the media, different youth groupings are much more aware of other youth cultures and may adopt and usurp them. With regard to nightlife culture divisions see Hollands (2002) and Chatterton and Hollands (2003), for example. Also see MacDonald and Shildrick (2006) for a general critique of postmodern theories of youth leisure.

8. Although this point is challenged by Shildrick's (2002) research and also critiqued in Blackman (2005).

9. As one reviewer pointed out, it is important to highlight the fact that all the data that follow come from an online questionnaire—hence it should be distinguished as ‘quantitative’ data. While this is technically correct, we should like to point out three caveats to this observation. First, most methodology texts these days do not make such an easy distinction between quantitative and qualitative data (see for instance May 2001; Bryman 2004). Second, on the online questionnaire we attempted to collect both factual quantitative data as well as to elicit more interpretive data through including open-ended questions, which many of our sample participated in, some in great detail. While it might be suggested that such interpretive data collected through a questionnaire are not as ‘verifiable’ as qualitative data collected through ethnography and participant observation, these latter methods contain their own weaknesses (see Hammersley 1992). Finally, the first author did have some direct experiences of psytrance events in Goa and in Europe, and some points we make from the data are corroborated through her participant–observer experience as well as the questionnaire data.

10. Like the gender figures, it is possible that there may be differences between the social class position of respondents who had access to the Internet (see Graham 2002) and those who attend psytrance dance events, although obviously the cost of travel to such events may also be affected by one's disposable income. However, numerous respondents commented on the ‘openness’ and accepting nature of the culture, thereby implying a fairly wide membership. Furthermore, some mixture of social classes was observed by the first author while attending psytrance events in Goa and in various European locations.

11. Below we present the qualitative material simply by nationality and country of origin and a number to distinguish between participants.