‘still raving’: social reaction to Ecstasy

Abstract

In the late 1980s and early 1990s there emerged in the UK a new youth cultural phenomenon, the rave. Subsequently transformed into clubbing, it is now a significant part of the leisure activities of young people well into their 20s. Reconstructing its history reveals the development of rave culture through the confluence of innovations in music, drugs and dance and the largely negative social reaction from media, police and government. Three perspectives are evaluated for their utility in analysing these processes: the moral panics framework, theories of risk and ethnographies of clubbing. Each has a contribution to make but they also indicate some substantive unresolved issues, all relevant to leisure studies. There is a need for a revised sociology of youth, case study material on moral regulation and greater sustained attention to music, dance and drugs as central to the formation of contemporary youth cultures in leisure.