Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A close look at the music and culture of dance clubs and the "rave" phenomenon..

Focusing on youth cultures that revolve around dance clubs and raves in Great Britain and the U.S., Sarah Thornton highlights the values of authenticity and hipness and explores the complex hierarchies that emerge within the domain of popular culture. She portrays club cultures as "taste cultures" brought together by micro-media like flyers and listings, transformed into self-conscious "subcultures" by such niche media as the music and style press, and sometimes recast as "movements" with the aid of such mass media as tabloid newspaper front pages. She also traces changes in the recording medium from a marginal entertainment in the 50s to the clubs and raves of the 90s.

Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Thornton coins the term "subcultural capital" to make sense of distinctions made by "cool" youth, noting particularly their disparagement of the "mainstream" against which they measure their alternative cultural worth. Well supported with case studies, readable, and innovative, Club Cultures will become a key text in cultural and media studies and in the sociology of culture.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• List of Plates
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• 1 The Distinctions of Cultures Without Distinction
• Introduction
• Youth and their Social Spaces
• 2 Authenticities from Record Hops to Raves (and the History of Disc Culture)
• The Authentication of a Mass Media
• Industrial Forces, Musician Resistance and 'Live' Ideology
• 'Real' Events and Altered Spaces
• The Authentication of Dance Genres
• The Response of the 'Live' Gig
• Conclusion
• 3 Exploring the meaning of the Mainstream (or why Sharon and Tracy Dance around their Handbags)
• A night of Research
• Academic Accounts of the Cultural Organization of Youth
• The Social Logic of Subcultural Capital
• Participation versus Observation of Dance Crowds Conclusion
• 4 The Media Development of 'Subcultures' (or the Sensational Story of 'Acid House')
• The Underground versus the Overexposed
• Mass Media: 'Selling Out' and 'Moral Panic'
• Micro-Media: Flyers, Listings, Fanzines, Pirates
• Nice Media: the Editorial Search for Subcultures
• Conclusion
• Afterword
• Bibliography
• Index

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Based on observation and participation at more than 200 discos, clubs, and raves (the latter best known in the US as venues where the taking of the drug ecstasy has been common) in Britain between 1988 and 1992, this study of club cultures (though written too frequently in a ponderous prose style, especially given the dynamics of the topic) offers the perspective of a young sociologist/cultural critic. Its greatest strength is its author's youthful viewpoint coupled with the fact that she is a North American looking at a largely foreign phenomenon. The result is that the author frequently takes issue with standard sources by such authors as Dick Hebdige (Subculture, 1979) and Jock Young (The Drugtakers, 1971). Thornton's conclusions provide useful insights and explanations for the youth movement in Britain closely associated with dance clubs and the rich complexities of this culture involving such issues as social status and self-worth. Performative aspects of the phenomenon are of little interest here; the study is most relevant to those concerned with subcultures, the distinctive differences between life and recorded music in the dance environment, and the impact of the media on interpreting this culture. D. B. Wilmeth Brown University

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Sarah Thornton is Lecturer in Media Studies at the University of Sussex and coeditor of The Subcultures Reader (1996).