Raves and Raving

The collection provides insights on developments in post-traditional religiosity (especially 'New Age' and 'Neo-Paganism') through studies of rave's Gnostic narratives of ascensionism and re-enchantment, explorations of the embodied spirituality and millennialist predispositions of dance culture, and investigations of transnational digital-art countercultures manifesting at geographic locations as diverse as Goa, India, and Nevada's Burning Man festival. Contributors examine raving as a new religious or revitalization movement; a powerful locus of sacrifice and transgression; a lived bodily experience; a practice comparable with world entheogenic rituals; and as evidencing a new Orientalism. Rave Culture and Religion will be essential reading for advanced students and academics in the fields of sociology, cultural studies and religious studies.

Once it was just Mods and Rockers or Hippies and Skinheads. Now we have Riot Grrls and Rappers; Modern Primitives and Metalheads; Goths, Clubcultures and Fetishists; Urban Tribes, New Age Travellers and Internet fan groups. In a global society with a rapid proliferation of images, fashions and lifestyles, it is -unsurprisingly - becoming increasingly difficult to pinpoint what 'subculture actually means. Enthusiastically adopted by the media and academia, subculture may be a convenient way to describe more unconventional aspects of youth culture, but it does little to help us comprehend the diverse range of youth groups in todays so-called postmodern world. How can we begin to rethink, reformulate and replace outdated notions of subcultures to make them applicable to the experiences of youth in the twenty-first century? And to what extent does this involve the challenging of past orthodoxies about spectacular subcultural styles?From Seattle anarchist punks to UK Asian underground music, Canadian female X-Files fans to Australian dance cultures, this groundbreaking book draws on a wide variety of international case studies to investigate the new relationships among youth subcultural music, politics and taste. Is it possible to work within the existing limitations of subculture, or has the concept exhausted its usefulness? Can attempts at re-conceptualization, such as neo-tribes, sub-streams and micro-networks, adequately capture the experience of fragmentation, flux and fluidity that is central to contemporary youth culture?This timely book is the first to challenge and reconsider the use of subculture. In doing so, it questions the possibility and relevance of what might be termed post-subcultural studies and helps to chart the emergence of a new paradigm for the study of youth subculture.

Cultural Criminology and the Carnival of Crime attempts to make sense of the current increase in violence, cruelty, hate and humiliation, which has come to permeate daily life. The text argues that an overly organised economic world has provoked a widespread desire for extreme, oppositional forms of popular and personal pleasure. This desire has resulted in a cathartic 'second life' of illicit pleasures often deemed criminal by those in power. Amongst the exciting issues Mike Presdee addresses are: * joyriding * street crime * antisocial behaviour in private via the internet * hate, hurt and humiliation in popular culture * the popularisation and criminalisation of sadomasochism and dance music cultures.

Oxford Readings in Feminism provide accessible, one-volume guides to the very best in contemporary feminist thinking, assessing its impact and importance in key areas of study. Collected together by scholars of outstanding reputation in their field, the articles chosen represent the most important work on feminist issues, and concise, lively introductions to each volume crystallize the main lines of debate in the field. This collection, edited by Morag Shiach, brings together exciting work in feminism and cultural studies from different countries and different historical moments. It combines 'classic' articles with more recent work to offer an insight into the challenges and innovations of work within cultural studies. The collection is organised thematically in ways which illuminate the development of theoretical and political debates within feminism and cultural studies. Different traditions within cultural studies are brought into relation with each other to explore areas such as commodification, women and labour, mass culture, fantasy and ideas of home.

This book explores the significance which contemporary club cultures can come to have for women living through a time of radical sexual-political change. The book focuses upon the experiential accounts of different "raving" and clubbing women by illustrating how new, and more appropriate, fictions of femininity are generated within these accounts. Focus upon these aspects reveals the limitations of reading today's club cultures as indicators of a sexual-political regression.

Cool Places explores the contrasting experiences of contemporary youth, exploring such topics as representation and resistance in young people's lives by drawing on techno music and ecstasy, clubbing, global backpacking and employment seeking.