Rave Off

Steve Redhead and a team of authors from the Manchester Institute for Popular Culture at Manchester Polytechnic have written an account of deviant youth culture at the end of the century, concentrating on the much hyped "rave" scene and its connections to recreational drug use - such as Ecstasy - contemporary pop and dance music, youth tourism, football hooliganism and the "enterprise culture". The essays draw on first-hand, ethnographic research, and are written in an accessible style for both the general reader and the specialist student. In different ways they revise our understanding of previous cultural studies approaches to youth cultures and critically examine the "applicability" of the writings of the controversial French cultural theorist, Jean Baudrillard, to today's pop culture. The text attempts to provide answers to such questions as what is "rave" culture? What had "Manchester" got to do with it? Has the rave (formerly acid house) scene merely parodied an earlier moment in pop history (1960s psychedelia, 1970s punk or Northern Soul)? Is illegal "party drug" use a passing fad, or here to stay?
What political and legal implications are there in this new "hedonism in hard times"? Has 1990s youth culture embraced or rejected the values of the market, individualism and enterprise?