Culture and Society - The rave scene in Britain

In its heyday rave attracted tens of thousands of people and the venue often remained a secret until a few hours before the event. Rave crowds are mostly young and from all different areas of society.

People in Britain got involved in the rave scene to escape from reality. They worked long stressful weeks and and went to raves at the weekends. It was their way to escape and deal with issues of identity for a few hours each night at the weekends. They release all their stress built up from the working week by dancing non stop for about three hours. Rave isn't about going out and getting so drunk that you cant't stand, it's even about drinking at all. It's more about the dance and getting lost in it. People may use cocaine and e tablets for a bit of a high and to try and stay in control, they want the feel good factor. Ravers generally stay away from alcohol but not everyones opts for drugs either. A lot of people stay away from everything and they just go for the music and to dance,they get high on the atmosphere.

Both men and women wear very little when raving, this may be due to the heat generated while dancing but they also like to show off their bodies. The activity involved at raves can be described as child like, the whistle blowing and dummy sucking. Clothes are considered symbols or badges of acceptance. People involved need to appear as in control. These are the norms of the group.

Raves take place in empty warehouse's rather than in nightclubs or anywhere you can fit a lot of people and a sound system. It's not the club that is being promoted but the organiser of the rave. This made the scene fresh, exciting and liberating. Organisers strived to achieve exclusivity. Newspapers reported on how hard these raves were to get into but this was good publicity for them as more and more people now hoped to get in. These were then referred to as superclubs.

Rave happened in Britain during a period of major consumerism and individualism. Margret Thatcher was telling everyone to look after number 1. This together with English Dj's coming back from the rave scene in Ibiza, having experienced drugs and rave culture first hand, had an effect on the people of Britain. Instead of money and power, rave called for empathy, intimacy, spirituality and the joy of losing yourself in the crowd.


But, by the early 90's the government had enough of the rave culture. Police were giving the power to order people to move if they were believed to be preparing a rave, waiting for a rave to start or attending a rave. All offences were liable to imprisonment or a fine if ignored. This killed off free parties and events not licensed through local government.

*Information came from these two websites
http://www.thesite.org/drinkanddrugs/drugculture/drugstrade/thehistoryofrave

http://www.bath.ac.uk/criac/publications/pdf/10_Shankar_CMC.pdf