U Ideas of General Interest -- December 2002 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Contact: Melissa Mitchell, News Editor (217) 333-5491; melissa at uiuc.edu
Story at http://www.news.uiuc.edu/gentips/02/12rave.html
YOUTH CULTURE Reining in 'ravers' a matter of keeping them safe, scholar says
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- The passions and practices of youthful revelers drawn to the so-called rave culture are causing some members of the dominant culture to do some raving of their own. And a fair amount of ranting and hand-wringing, too.
Much of the consternation over raves is from parents, municipal officials and others who are opposed to the rave scene, primarily on moral grounds, according to Troy Glover, a professor of leisure studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Generally speaking, raves are all-night dance parties during which androgynously dressed teens and young adults collectively thrash about to the pulsating beat of music that's been described as having "the melodic delicacy of a car alarm."
Glover explained that opponents of raves tend to regard the gatherings as a purely hedonistic, deviant form of leisure activity. But the main objection, he said, is to party-goers' use of Ecstacy and other "club drugs," which they ingest to fuel their nocturnal dance fever.
While relatively few deaths or serious health consequences have been linked to drug use at raves, a handful of widely publicized, drug-related deaths at events in the United States and Canada have focused renewed attention on the rave scene, Glover said. "A moral panic has emerged around this activity," he said, "but it's not because there's a huge amount of people dying from this." Instead, it's because "raves have been portrayed as a threat to societal values and interests. We see anything not associated with productivity as deviant.
"Despite this moral panic that's arisen around the negatives associated with raves, there's a need to put the positive aspects of the culture in perspective," said Glover, whose research focuses on community-building effects of leisure. "For the most part, it's nonviolent, and alcohol is not part of the culture." Also, "female participants have commented appreciatively about the lack of sexual tension at the rave events they have attended."
"In short," he writes in an article scheduled for publication in the spring 2003 issue of the journal Leisure Sciences, "the nature of the activity · suggests there are many appealing features of rave culture." The article, "Regulating the Rave Scene: Exploring the Policy Alternatives of Government," focuses on three possible approaches to reining in ravers: tolerance, prohibition and harm reduction. The most sensible option, he said, may be harm reduction, which emphasizes drug education and better monitoring of sites where raves are held -- to ensure adequate access to water and attention to other life-safety issues.
"I don't envy someone who has to implement policy here," Glover said. "But we need to have more of a candid discussion about it. We need to begin with the end in mind. We want kids to be safe and be able to protect them if we can. How we do that is another story -- a sticky issue." --- Sent from UnionMail Service [http://mail.union.org.za]