Since its beginnings a decade ago, the mass media, niche media, subculturalists and participants alike have fumbled around cumbersome descriptions and depictions of the essence of rave. For outsiders, rave may symbolize difference, defiance, escapism and meaningless hedonism. For insiders, rave can mean transgression, transcendence, freedom, unity and meaningful fun. / All rave elements, such as the lights, lasers, stomping feet, raised arms in ecstatic bliss, the DJ and the ceaseless beats seem to synchronize in a unifying pulse. As communal as rave's facade may seem, the experience is wholly personal. Rave has been disseminated to undeveloped nations, and remote towns; as it grows in one area it decays in another and morphs into another sub-scene, dress code, venue, and soundscape. As an insider stepping outward, I peer into my memories of rave and catalogue of blissful moments in an attempt to articulate its essence and its cyclical perpetuation.

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Thesis (M.A.)--York University, 2000. Graduate Programme in Social Anthropology. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 142-147). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pMQ59167.

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This thesis is an analysis as to whether or not Subcultural Theory may be utilized to understand how self-identification is configured within a subculture such as rave. Typically, subcultural membership requires various performative rites that express and maintain a group sensibility and identity. Rave, however, is a subculture that involves a relationship to space and technology that changes the nature of group affiliation within the subculture. This thesis focuses on how a body immersed in subcultural practices, and organized around varying technologies, must look toward an analysis of individual and subjective adaptations of those technologies. In essence, rave allows for identification that is shaped and altered by the participant, but only at each moment of interaction with the technologies of the club. Highly individualistic, dynamic, and technology-driven, the rave subculture offers the potential to examine the body as the site for identification, and escape, within an abstracting technological world.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available via World Wide Web.