Abstract
This dissertation is an ethnographic study
of night
club culture in
This study gives background
information on the city of
I have also looked at some of
the work on youth subcultures by members
of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies and examined
its
relevance to modern day youth subcultures.
There is a review of some of the literature available on
club culture,
although, I have noted that not a great deal has actually been written
about
the experience and importance of club culture, there is however much
more
literature on the history of the rave and club scenes.
Music is very important in
defining spaces and I have explored how music
gives meaning to spaces and those within those spaces give meaning to
the
music.
I have shown the importance
of belonging to social groups and particular
youth orientated spaces to the youth of
All of the research was
undertaken in my home town and many of those
that I have observed have been members of my social group.
I have a great deal of background knowledge
on club culture in Plymouth and have used this to allow me access to
social and
cultural areas that may not have been available to a researcher who was
not a
local.
Introduction
This dissertation is an
ethnographic study of nightclub culture in
Plate
0.1 – The exterior of the Bus Stop, Bretonside Bus Station,
I wanted to research a topic
that is of interest to me and is already
part of my life. I first went clubbing
in
Chapter 3 will be the
methodology section where I will discuss the
research methods I have chosen and explain why I felt that these were
the best
methods to use. I will also give a
review of feminist geography and why I feel that feminist methodologies
are
important to my chosen method of study. Chapter
4 will be an analysis of the results and I will go into great detail
about what
I discovered whilst undertaking my research and the importance of my
findings.
Rather than study an already
established nightclub venue in
As I have been a local
resident in
Although, since the
Birmingham C.C.C.S. (discussed in Chapter 2.) was
set up, there has been a great deal written on youth subcultures, very
little
research has been conducted on night club culture as a youth
subculture,
especially using the ethnographic methods that I have used. During the course of my background reading
for this study I came across a relatively large selection of writings
and
research about dance music and rave culture, this tended to focus on
the rave
scene of the late 1980s to early 1990s.
Although useful to my study, as much of the work discussed
the meaning
of music to youth and the importance of the rave revolution to the
expansion of
the modern day club scene, I was unable to find much up to date work on
the
club scene. I came across numerous books
on the history of the modern dance music scene, for example, Matthew
Collin’s
book entitled Altered State: The Story of
Ecstasy Culture and Acid House, this is a fantastic history of the
scene
and many other writings that I have read have been influenced by this
book, as
the review on the back cover tells us, this book has become a seminal
text on
dance culture,
“From its first publication
in 1997, Altered State established itself as the
definitive text on dance culture…drawing on a wealth of background
research and
original interviews with key figures on both sides of the law, Altered State examines the causes and
contexts, ideologies and myths of Ecstasy culture, dramatising its
euphoric
narrative from peak experience to comedown and aftermath, and shedding
new
light on the social history of the most spectacular youth movement of
the
century”
(Collin, 1997: back cover).
Although this book does offer
some information on club culture, it
mainly focuses on the rave and drug scenes in the
Bill Brewster and Frank
Broughton’s book (1999), Last Night a DJ Saved my Life:
The history of the disc jockey, is
again more of a history book. It charts
the creation and rise of the DJ from their beginnings on American radio
to the
celebrity status that many DJs enjoy today.
This book does give more detail on the history of night
clubs as they
are synonymous with the DJ, but again very little is written about the
experience of clubbing, what it means to youth and the social phenomena
surrounding it.
There are, however, a few
selected writings on this topic that I wish to
discuss here, to give a background to the research already undertaken
on
contemporary night club culture. Sarah
Thornton’s book, Club Cultures: Music,
Media and Subcultural Capital, does look more at the sociology of
club culture
and also examines club spaces. In
describing what the book is about
As I was researching a group
that I am already part of, I tried to find
some comparable research. A book by
Hillegonda Rietveld, This is out house:
House music, cultural spaces and technologies, was exactly this,
“this
study can be seen as an example of how ethnography can work from the
inside
out” (1998:5). Rietveld is part of the
house music scene, she once produced house music and then decided to
research
it,
“it was during the course of
doing
research interviews for this project that I started to realise, with
some
bewilderment, how much I was actually part of the events which led to
the
articulation of house music. Instead of
walking into strange territory, I ended up being welcomed like a long
lost
member of the family…because of this the access to research material
was
relatively easier for me than for someone who had freshly entered this
field of
research” (261).
This is exactly my position
in the field of my study. I wanted to
study the core group of local
clubbers in
Rietveld does, however,
discuss the spaces in which house music is
culturally produced and consumed, namely the club, “the social function
of
which is mainly that of a meeting place where, traditionally, one can
play the
ritual of mating on an uncommitted physical level and where one can
forget
one’s daily realities” (165). She also
discusses the cultural attachment that people may develop to certain
spaces, a
concept that I will discuss later on in this study.
I have completed a great deal
of background reading on night club culture
and dance music. The books I have
reviewed here give some idea as to the main focus of a lot of the
literature
relevant to this study. It has been easy
to find historic reviews of this culture but very little has been
written about
the importance of club culture and club spaces to today’s youth when
creating
identities and defining social territory, which are the main concepts
examined
in this study.
The understanding of youth
cultures and space is an essential part of
modern geography. This study will
examine the concept of insiders and outsiders in societal groupings and
cultural spaces. It will also examine
how certain spaces are created and how people give meanings to spaces
and
spaces give meanings to people. The
importance of social territory will be discussed and how boundaries are
created, transgressed and broken down and how important it is to have a
sense
of place, a feeling of belonging to somewhere.
All of these are important geographical issues and will be
discussed in
detail in this study.