Club Spaces Research Articles

Decline of the Rave Inspired Clubculture in China: State Suppression, Clubber Adaptations and Socio-cultural Transformations

This study examines the development of rave inspired clubculture in China between the late 1990s and the present. It focuses in particular on the harsh suppression of clubland by the Chinese state in 2000, the reactions of clubbers and the club industry, and the clubcultural transformations that resulted from the suppression. A nationally coordinated anti-drug campaign that specifically targeted dance clubs was orchestrated by the central government and it has forced many clubs to close down. The rent-seeking practices of local officials also greatly intimidated clubbers. Clubbers and club operators adapted to the adverse circumstances by transforming club spaces and inventing new club practices. Although these adaptations have kept clubculture alive, they also generated negative socio-cultural impacts: the undermining of sociality inside dance clubs, the weakening of the communal dimension of clubculture and the exacerbation of socio-economic stratification in clubland.

“Out” in the Club: The Down Low, Hip-Hop, and the Architexture of Black Masculinity

This essay explores the relationship between black masculine performances, the club space, and men on the "down low” (DL). Some black men who have sex with other men, who dis-identify with normative descriptors of sexuality, refer to themselves as “men on the down low.” The assumption about DL men, in recent publications, is that they do not reside in identifiably gay or queer spaces. This essay examines “The Gate”—a gay black club in Chicago—as a space which allows DL men to negotiate their masculine ideals and queer desire, challenging the traditional closet-threshold paradigm.

From D.D's to Y.Y. to Park 97 to Muse: Dance Club Spaces and the Construction of Class in Shanghai, 1997-2007

From D.D's to Y.Y. to Park 97 to Muse: Dance Club Spaces and the Construction of Class in Shanghai, 1997-2007

From D.D's to Y.Y. to Park 97 to Muse: Dance Club Spaces and the Construction of Class in Shanghai, 1997–2007

This article explores the development of an internationalised dance club scene in Shanghai between 1997 and 2007, focusing on four clubs. It examines how clubs have become a conduit for dance and music to enter China, while also exploring how both local and international clubbing practices are negotiated. The roles of owners, managers, DJs, and patrons in constructing the clubbing experience are discussed as well as the tendency for clubs to promote social and sexual interactions between local and overseas Chinese and foreigners. Clubs also provide separate and distinct cultural and social spaces for these groups to create their own social and class identities.

Health clubs and body politics: aesthetics and the quest for physical capital

At present, the western world wrestles with an obesity epidemic whilst, paradoxically, maintaining a fascination for the aesthetic ideal body. With the Scottish health and fitness industry providing the empirical backdrop, and drawing on the work of Bourdieu, this paper critically reflects upon processes of embodied production and consumption and the quest for physical capital and its referential symbolism. Using a range of qualitative methods across three case study facilities it is argued that as consumers seek to attain desired forms of physical capital, health and fitness clubs serve both to capitalize on and perpetuate cycles of embodied dissatisfaction. Although willingly subjecting their bodies to constant ocularcentric and objectifying processes, consumers are constantly reminded of their failure to attain the physical capital they desire. These processes not only mirror modern consumerism but also highlight a process of self‐imposed domination. With external medical and media discourses exerting persistent pressure on the embodied state, desire for physical capital produces a self‐legitimating and regulatory regime perpetrated upon the self within the internal environment of the health and fitness club. Therefore, as a venue for playing out aesthetic politics, health and fitness club spaces are anything but healthy as they oil the desire and dreamscape of physical capital, maintaining an aesthetic masochism and thus keeping the treadmills literally and economically turning.

New shapes on the dance floor: influencing ambient sound and vision with computationally augmented poi

This article charts the design, development and build of an interactive performance piece created specifically for use in a club context. At the time of writing it remains work in progress but our aim here is to articulate our creative and research goals and unpack some of the issues surrounding creating hybridized work. The piece takes a traditional set of poi that clubbers often dance with in trance and techno clubs and attempts to augment them with sensor technology in order to allow the shapes, patterns and movements made by the participant to become visualized elsewhere in the club space. Choreographic motifs drawn from the participants' motion in space with the poi add a further layer to the performance, which seeks to set up physical conversations between the dancer, the space, the technology and the club context itself.

Play space: historical and socio-cultural reflections on drugs, licensed leisure locations, commercialisation and control

This paper will consider legal and illicit drug use in relation to changing leisure spaces, reflecting on different types of leisure space from the formal, controlled and purpose built licensed leisure locations of the modern urban landscape to the illicit, unregulated and wild zones beyond. Drawing on a range of literature, as well as empirical studies by the author, the historical and socio-cultural development of leisure space in relation to dance clubs, public houses and café bars in the UK will be considered. The relationship between spatiality, consumption, commercialisation and control is analysed through a consideration of changes in licensed leisure spaces; changes in the use of legal and illicit drugs within them; and state and commercial responses to these changes at local and national level. After pub and club space, the third and final consideration is the notion of head space, utilised and commodified in the pursuit of pleasure in late modern consumer society.

'Up for it, mad for it? Women, drug use and participation in club scenes'

In this paper the meanings that participating in contemporary club scenes have for women are analysed in terms of risk and pleasure. The notion that club spaces provide an equal environment where women are free to participate without encountering sexual harassment from men is questioned, as is the assumption that all club spaces are the same. The differences between club spaces are discussed in terms of mainstreams and undergrounds and the implications that these different spaces have an impact on the women who choose a clubbing lifestyle. Previous accounts of women's sexual behaviour have focused on risk and danger. This extended analysis, by putting this behaviour into the context of drug use, risk and pleasure allows for a different reading of women's experiences. An ethnographic study using in-depth interviews, focus groups and participant observations was carried out to ascertain how women viewed their own participation on club scenes. The data suggests that women feel more comfortable in underground club spaces as they encounter less sexual harassment there, and that factors such as alcohol use and self esteem are crucial in determining risk taking behaviour. The use of ecstasy itself was not seen as a precursor to risk taking behaviour. The negotiation of femininity and sexuality in club spaces is highlighted as problematic for the women concerned. In constructing identities within club spaces however, a positive femininity can be produced in opposition to traditional, passive images of femininity and sexuality.

Discographies: dance music, culture and the politics of sound

Experiencing disco, hip hop, house, techno, drum 'n' bass and garage, Discographies plots a course through the transatlantic dance scene of the last last twenty-five years. It discusses the problems posed by contemporary dance culture of both academic and cultural study and finds these origins in the history of opposition to music as a source of sensory pleasure. Discussing such issues as technology, club space. drugs, the musical body, gender, sexuality and pleasure, Discographies explores the ecstatic experiences at the heart of contemporary dance culture. It suggests why politicians and agencies as diverse as the independent music press and public broadcasting should be so hostile to this cultural phenomenon.

‘He Likes Women More Than He Likes Drink and That Is Quite Unusual’: Working‐Class Social Clubs, Male Culture, and Heterosocial Relations in the United States, 1920s–1930s

Throughout the early twentieth century working‐class men spent much of their leisure time in their basement hangouts, known as social clubs. Social clubs usually formed out of the associational life of young working‐class men and remained attached to a larger male culture. But they were also used for dances and other heterosocial interaction. This essay examines the organisation of these clubs and how members used them to negotiate homosocial and heterosocial leisure. In particular, it explores the struggles between men and women over the use of club space and how those struggles affected their relationships and male culture.