Rave is one of the first distinct and significant youth subcultures to emerge since the early days of punk rockers and skinheads. A middle-class culture renowned for drug use, computer-generated "techno" music, and all-night dance parties, rave has been described as everything from a drug cult to a neo-hippie community. Brian Wilson uses his ethnographic research on rave during the mid and late 1990s in Southern Ontario to discuss the ways in which young people participate in social and cultural life at the turn of the millennium.
Fight, Flight or Chill explores the extent to which raver youths' experiences are constrained or determined by individualistic, high-tech, mass-mediated Western culture in which alienated and unfulfilled youth are apparently more at-risk for escapist and thrill-seeking behaviours. Wilson considers how raver youth creatively and proactively subvert these constraints in novel and empowering ways - from political activism to symbolic and stylistic expressions of resistance to community-building efforts. He also discusses the globalization and political economy of rave and youth culture and examines the ideologies that underlie simple solutions to the complex concerns over young people today.
Review quotes
"Wilson uses the Toronto rave scene to demonstrate the complexity of contemporary youth in contrast to the somewhat one-dimensional portraits of 'troubled' and 'troubling' youth painted by the mass media and many academics. Wilson’s analysis is simply the most comprehensive and theoretically interesting academic work on rave culture in Canada." John Shepherd, Chancellor Professor of Music and Sociology, Carleton University
Brian Wilson is associate professor, cultural studies and sociology, School of Human Kinetics, University of British Columbia.
