The marketplace management of illicit pleasure

Copyright Journal of Consumer Research 2008.

Preprint (not formatted or copyedited).

Do not quote or cite without permission.

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The Marketplace Management of Illicit Pleasure

CHRISTINA GOULDING

AVI SHANKAR

RICHARD ELLIOTT

ROBIN CANNIFORD*

* Christina Goulding is Professor of Consumer Research, Wolverhampton Business

School, University of Wolverhampton, Compton Park, Wolverhampton, WV3 9DX, UK.

Tel: (+44)1902 323 692. Email: [email protected]. Avi Shankar is Senior Lecturer

in Marketing and Consumer Research, School of Management, University of Bath, BA2

7AY, UK. Email:[email protected] Richard Elliott is Professor of Marketing and

Consumer Research, School of Management, University of Bath, BA2 7AY, UK. Email:

[email protected] Robin Canniford is Lecturer in Marketing and Consumer Culture,

School of Business and Economics, University of Exeter, EX4 4PU, UK. Email:

[email protected]

Abstract

Through pleasure, a foundational concept in consumer behavior, we offer an analysis of

the history, development and experience of clubbing, the post-cursor of rave, the

contextual focus of this paper. Based on a 5 yr. study primarily involving participant

observation and interviewing, we present an analysis of how the clubbing experience is

co-created by promoters, DJs and the clubbers themselves. We develop and demonstrate

a biosocial conceptualization of pleasure and show how the shared experience of music,

dance, the organization of space and the effects of the drug Ecstasy combine to produce a

highly sought-after, calculated, suspension of the rules and norms of everyday life.

Further we suggest that the club, and the pleasurable practices and experiences that it

supports, has become a site of contained illegality. Here, the illicit, subversive practices

of rave have now become shepherded and channelled into more predictable, manageable

and regulated environments facilitated by the „knowing wink‟ of the club promoters, the

police and the State authorities. Implications for consumer research are discussed.




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Pursuing and experiencing pleasure is a fundamental facet of the human condition and an

essential mediator of consumer behavior. Within the consumer research literature

pleasure is foundational for understanding experiential consumption (Holbrook and

Hirschman 1982), extraordinary experiences (Arnould and Price 1993), hedonic

consumption (Hirschman and Holbrook 1982), high-risk forms of consumption (Celsi,

Rose and Leigh 1993), intense affective consumption (Schindler and Holbrook 2003) and

passionate forms of consumption (Belk, Ger and Askegaard 2003).

Clubbing, the focus of this paper, is a manifestation of all these previously studied

forms of consumption. However, the pleasures of clubbing are also grounded in illicit,

recreational drug consumption. This context enables us to explore and develop pleasure

from a biosocial perspective. By this we mean that the pleasures of clubbing are mediated

by the effects of the dance drug Ecstasy and intensified when the experience is shared

with other like-minded people. Additionally, the illicit consumption practices associated

with clubbing, remind us that sources of pleasure can be subject to legal sanction if, for

whatever reason, they are deemed to cross socially acceptable boundaries.

For the uninitiated, clubbing is a hugely popular, multi-billion dollar, global

cultural phenomenon with its influence felt across the music, film, television, advertising,

tourism, leisure, publishing, brewing, and fashion industries (McRobbie1994; Sellars

1998). Like its precursor rave, clubbing is constructed around a particular musical

aesthetic, embodied in a „combination of electronic musical forms, new technologies, the

drug Ecstasy, and dancing spaces‟ (Jowers 1999, p. 381-2). Clubbing is an exemplar of a

marketplace culture. Within Consumer Culture Theory (CCT), marketplace cultures are

conceptualized as transient social spaces where the often alienating and individualizing

effects of everyday modern life in advanced industrialized societies can be temporarily

ameliorated in favor of the effervescent excitement and energy of ritualistic, communal

sociality and solidarity (e.g., Arnould and Thompson 2005; Goulding, Shankar and Elliott

2002; Kozinets 2002; Maffesoli 1996; Malbon 1999; St John 2002; Thornton 1995).

Our paper is structured as follows. We begin with a brief discussion of prior

understandings of pleasure in consumer research, before developing a conceptualization

of pleasure for our study. Having described the methods used in our study, we present a

historical analysis of rave and its development into clubbing. We then proceed to describe

and interpret the clubbing experience in terms of the inter-relationships between the

production and consumption of pleasure.

We find that the effects of the deafening music, the ingestion of Ecstasy, the

energetic dancing and the management and organization of space combine to produce a

calculated, highly sought-after, shared experience and a temporary suspension of the rules

and norms of everyday life. We show how this biosocial effect, what we call losing it,

extends our current understanding of the subjective experience of pleasure.

We also develop our historical analysis of the transformation of rave into clubbing

as an example of contained illegality and demonstrate how illicit pleasures are contained

temporally and organized spatially into more predictable and manageable environments.

It is through the processes and practices of contained illegality that morally contentious

pleasures are rendered more controllable through the marketplace. We end with a

discussion of how our interpretations have broader implications for consumer research.




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PLEASURE: A SELECT REVIEW

In order to situate our conceptualization of pleasure, in this section we offer a

necessarily select review of first, the consumer research literature on pleasure, followed

by a more general review that, together, we use to inform our own framing of pleasure.

Pleasure in Consumer Research and Beyond

Pleasure has been conceptualized as hedonic and experiential consumption,

product use that can be multi-sensorial, fantastical and highly emotional and the pleasures

to be found in forms of consumption where emotional responses to thinking about or

engaging in acts of consumption are prevalent (Hirschman and Holbrook 1982; Holbrook

and Hirschman 1982). Le Bel and Dubé (1998) addressed pleasure through the

construction of a typology – sensorial, social and psychological pleasures – and

determined that pleasure was cyclical in nature – anticipating and experiencing pleasure

and then reflecting on past pleasurable experiences (see also Arnould and Price 1993).

Other significant studies have attempted to account for different manifestations of

hedonic consumption through, for example, the pleasures of extraordinary or peak

experiences (Arnould and Price 1993; Celsi et al. 1993).

Neo-Darwinian discourse has examined the origins and functions of pleasure in

evolutionary psychology and anthropology (Johnston 2003; Tiger 2000). Tiger (2000) for

example, has identified four categories of pleasure two of which are particularly pertinent

to our study: physiopleasures are related to the body‟s sensory experiences and

sociopleasures refer to the pleasures that people get from being together.

A moral perspective on pleasure, that aesthetic or intellectual pleasures were

intrinsically superior to the more carnal, visceral and sensual pleasures of the body (Plato

2006; Russell 2005) has dominated post-Enlightenment Western thought leading to a

variety of different, competing discourses of pleasure. For example, Catholic and

Protestant religious discourses have distinguished between: the natural, sensuous urges of

carnal pleasures of the body; the rationalized, safety of disciplined „civilized‟ pleasures in

moderation; the self-training, self-managing and even total self-denial peculiar to ascetic

pleasures; and the ritualistic, spiritual, communality of ecstatic pleasures (see Coveney

and Bunton 2003).

Pleasure in Club Culture: A Conceptual Framework

In this section we seek to understand and unite a variety of factors that coalesce to

construct the clubbing experience. Our aim is to develop the current understanding of

pleasure in consumer research by combining individual aspects of hedonic or experiential

consumption with biological, social and historical factors. In particular we draw on the

distinction between pleasure as feelings and sources of pleasurable experiences to

consider: the biology of pleasure, the pleasure of sociality or being together and the




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regulation of pleasure. We therefore develop a conceptualization of pleasure as a complex

biosocial phenomenon subject to competing socio-historic discourses.

The Biology of Pleasure; Especially pertinent to our study is an understanding

of the biology of pleasure. Theories of a reward or pleasure centre in the brain, fuelled by

the chemical transmitter dopamine, implicitly underpin Tiger‟s (2000) evolutionary

perspective on pleasure. In this view, pleasure is a reward for actions that ensured

survival thereby increasing the likelihood that environmentally apt genes would be

transmitted to successive generations via natural selection. Other pleasure circuits have

since been identified based on serotonin and opioids such as endorphins. Moreover, for

those whose safety is no longer an issue, the brain‟s pleasure centres are activated by a

whole host of everyday consumer practices, from playing games and sports, to

consuming food and drink high in sugar and, more pertinent to this study, the ingestion of

psychoactive substances (Damasio 2003; Levine, Kotz and Gosnell, 2003). Almost all

human cultures have psychoactive substances that historically were used primarily for

religious or spiritual purposes. In contemporary cultures, the recreational use of mind-

altering drugs enables the interaction with, and artificial stimulation of, the biological

pleasure circuits of the brain. Ecstasy, the drug of choice in rave and club culture,

activates the serotonin pathways and, as its name suggests, produces overwhelming

feelings of pleasure. Ecstasy‟s use and effects (described later) are thus integral to the

experience of pleasure in rave and club culture.

The Pleasure of Sociality; Whilst pleasure can take many forms, some of the

most memorable and anticipated are those that are shared with others: sociopleasures. For

Maffesoli (2007, p.27), „people feeling emotions together‟ is the foundation for

contemporary communities. He talks of the present, exaggerated search for pleasure,

found in, for example, group trances, sporting events and religious gatherings. They often

involve „strange‟ almost magical experiences that supersede individuality (Belk and

Costa1998; Kozinets 2002). These communal, shared pleasures serve a basic, and, as

some have suggested, fundamental need to belong (Baumeister and O‟Leary 1995). Such

shared experiences also allow people to exercise choice by moving in and out of „islands

of consumption‟ that can offer temporary enchantment, magic and mystery (Ritzer 1999).

Whilst such experiences may be enjoyed alone but, when experienced socially, pleasure

is heightened. The pleasure of listening to music alone is a totally different experience to

the communal, contagious atmosphere of attending a live rock concert. Similarly with

clubbing its collective nature transforms the individual‟s experience.

Ecstasy‟s use and effects are integral to the social experience of rave and club

culture. Our understanding of pleasure seeks to situate the biology of pleasure within a

social framework, by contextualizing the brain‟s pleasure circuitry with the social actions

that can mediate and color the experience of pleasure. Understanding the neural circuitry

of a lone passive subject cannot fully account for the socially experienced feelings of

pleasure between active and interactive bodies that we aim to capture in this study.

The Regulation of Pleasure; Talk of illegal recreational drugs as vehicles for and

sources of pleasure is at odds with a Platonic tradition that considers intellectual pleasures




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superior to sensual pleasures. A society‟s attitudes towards vehicles of pleasure illustrates

that considerable power has been exercized to discipline the body, with those pleasures

considered deviant likely to incur repressive and judicial forms of power (Foucault 1980;

1995). The classification of recreational drugs as harmful and illegal demonstrates how a

society tries to regulate sources of pleasure by constructing medical and legal boundaries,

thereby delineating between socially acceptable and unacceptable practices.

Historically for example, the pleasures of lower classes were often seen as a

potential threat to the maintenance of social order and thus were classified as vices rather

than pleasures (O‟Malley and Valverde 2004; Reith 2004). In 18th

century London, a

primary source of pleasure for the poor working classes was gin. Unfortunately for them,

those in authority made and enforced a clear distinction between beer and gin. In contrast

to the pleasurable, healthy and productive properties ascribed to beer, gin was constructed

as a potential agent of social disorder, with excessive consumption corrupting its users

into a life of misery (O‟Malley and Valverde 2004). The production and drinking of gin

was finally regulated and controlled through the Gin Act of 1751, forcing distillers to sell

through licensed outlets only.

Fast-forward a couple of centuries and once acceptable, recreational drugs have

long since been criminalized (see Schlosser 2003). In contrast to the vast literature

describing drugs as potential sources of, or aids to recreational pleasurable experiences

(see Plant 1999), in „official‟ accounts (government, health services, mainstream press

etc.) drug consumers are often indicted as deviant, dishevelled, drug abusers and addicts

(O‟Malley and Valverde 2004). At the height of Ecstasy‟s popularity in the mid 1990s,

alarming stories appeared in the UK media warning of its potential harm but such stories

had little effect in stemming consumption, with literally millions of Ecstasy tablets

„dropped‟ every week. In the UK today, Ecstasy is classified as an illegal Class A drug

with penalties of up to 7 years for possession and a life sentence for supply, yet a recent

House of Commons Select Committee (2006) report ranked Ecstasy 18th

in a list of the

twenty most harmful drugs with alcohol ranked 5th

and tobacco 9th

.

To sum up, our biosocial framing of pleasure facilitates: the exploration of

pleasure as the subjective in collective – the drug-induced, socially enhanced, experience

of pleasure; and the consideration of sources of pleasurable experiences as socio-historic

discourses that can be produced, supplied and subject to legislative actions aimed at

regulation and control, if for whatever reason, they are deemed to cross socially

sanctioned or morally acceptable codes of behavior.

METHOD

As researchers, we already knew that clubbing emerged from the rave scene but

what we did not know was why or how this transformation occurred. To answer these

questions we situated our understanding of the practice of clubbing within its historical

context (Smith and Lux 1993). This involved familiarizing ourselves with literature on

rave (Collin 1997; Garrett 1998; Reynolds 1998), historical analysis of newspaper reports

and interviews with people who had experienced rave.

Concurrently, and for a five-year period, we engaged in participant observation

and immersed ourselves into the experience of clubbing. This was made possible by the




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co-operation of the promoters of club that was our research site who gave us access to

their club on a regular basis. They also introduced us to a number of clubbers who we

recruited to take part in one to one in-depth interviews designed to explore the lived

experience and meaning of clubbing for the clubbers themselves. A total of 34 clubbers

took part, 19 male and 15 female, ranging in age from 20 to 46, and drawn from a range

of occupations from students, to shop workers, to management consultants.

Through this inductive approach a number of themes emerged. First, rave has

undergone a transformation from a largely ungoverned, hedonistic, communal experience

to one that is equally communal yet highly marketized and managed. Second, for

clubbers, the pursuit and experience of pleasure is fundamental to understanding the

appeal of the clubbing experience. And finally, the pleasures associated with clubbing are

carefully orchestrated, contained and controlled through the use of a variety of ordering

technologies. We now proceed to explore and interpret these themes in more detail.

THE SOCIO-HISTORIC CONSTRUCTION OF CLUBBING

Rave

In the UK, the story of clubbing begins with the emergence of rave in the mid

1980s amidst the hedonistic indulgences that attracted thousands of young people from

across Europe to the Spanish island of Ibiza. The „White Isle‟ had become synonymous

with pleasure since the „boho‟ invasion of the 1960s and, with its relaxed attitudes

towards drugs, saw the emergence of a new music and dance based phenomenon, the

„Balearic Beat‟. Rave hit the UK in the late1980s, imported by British pioneers who had

holidayed on Ibiza. It quickly became characterized by impromptu, seemingly

spontaneous gatherings in fields in the open countryside and disused industrial

warehouses. As rave gained in popularity, literally thousands of people would descend on

hastily but well organized and co-ordinated gatherings, often centred on the orbital

motorway network encircling London. Andrew, one of our participants, fondly

remembers his early experiences:

… some of the people I knew suggested that I come along with them to a venue.

They had „gotton the word‟, so I went… I‟d heard about the scene but this was

something else. There were literally thousands of people, thousands of cars

heading in one direction to this point in the middle of nowhere… The sound, the

stage, the music, the lighting, the vibe, it was totally electric. To me it was like

some sort of awakening and after that I was hooked. I couldn‟t wait until the next

one… It was all underground. Someone would receive a flyer and pass the word

on… It was usually last minute because as you can imagine the police hated it.

They couldn‟t control it… Consequently the whole thing had to be kept secret up

until the last minute. But this was also a big part of the attraction, the anticipation,

the being ready to go at the last minute, the mystery and the feeling that you

shared a secret with a group of like-minded individuals.




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For many early ravers, the experience of rave was founded on commitment to

shared values, beliefs, actions and a communal spirit of resistance and protest against the

right wing politics of Thatcherite Britain, and its deleterious effects in terms of social and

economic change (Hill 2002). For other factions of the rave community, such as the „New

Age Travellers‟ and „Eco-Warriors‟ and as rave spread worldwide, it was also an act of

resistance and socio-political protest that stressed the reunification of people with their

natural environment, commitment to ecological sustainability, social justice, human

rights and the reclamation of public space (see St. John 2002).

From the late 1980s through to the early 1990s thousands of raves were held

across Britain, evoking moral panic in the media (Thornton 1995). The emergence of rave

was viewed largely as an anti-social practice and therefore a threat to public order. In

particular, rave became a target for the right wing press such as the The Sun and Daily

Mail. Rave existed in opposition to, and represented the antithesis of, middle-class,

conservative values. A lead editorial pronounced rave as, „A New Threat to British

Youth‟, with a feature story informing its readers that, „…as 11,000 youngsters

descended on a quiet airfield in the middle of the night, drug pushers were waiting for

them to tempt them with an evil concoction of narcotics‟ (Daily Mail 26th

June 1989).

Raves and ravers did not fit in with a Thatcherite view of Britain, and the moral panic

whipped up by the right wing press was an attempt to, „control…these „threatening‟

aspects of popular culture‟ or the „enemy within‟ (Hill 2002, p. 90). As media hype

concerning raves mounted, in 1989 the police forces in and around London set up a

special unit to monitor and control raves. In 1990, Margaret Thatcher‟s Conservative

government responded with legislative amendments to the Entertainment (Increased

Penalties) Act (Hill 2002). By early 1994, part 5 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order

Act, was drafted to specifically target raves and on 3rd

November 1994 the Act was

passed into law and raves were made illegal (Collin 1997; Hill 2002; Reynolds 1998).

Clubbing: The Marketization of Rave

After the 1994 Act, clubbing emerged as the primary vehicle for this combination

of dance, drugs, music and space. Venues were set up in disused warehouses and

eventually in regular nightclubs. Club promoters, ironically demonstrating the

entrepreneurial zeal characteristic of Thatcherism, would hire regular nightclubs for the

night, re-brand them, temporarily re-decorate them, hire DJs and publicize the event

primarily through flyers – promotional devices that are handed out to the “right looking”

people. In this way the club could literally move from location to location.

As the popularity of clubbing continued throughout the 1990s, permanent licenses

were granted and clubs became far easier for the local authorities and the police to

authorize, monitor and control. Increasingly the peripatetic club became replaced with a

permanent venue as, „slowly raves became integrated into the infrastructure of the

entertainment establishment: shepherded back into licensed premises, contained and

commodified‟ (Collin 1997, p.120). In the course of this process, the cultural practices

invoked through clubbing moved away from the counter-cultural, oppositional framings

of rave towards the realm of mass cultural orchestration. Anti-authoritarian political or

ideological resistance has little place in the marketized club scene. Rather than the




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evasive, ephemeral, egalitarian autonomy of rave, consumed predominantly outside in

natural environments, clubbing takes place in legally designated, permanent spaces with

the clubbing experience produced and consumed in carefully managed environments.

THE CLUBBING EXPERIENCE

What is it like to go clubbing? In the following extract from a researcher‟s memo

(written the day after a night out) a typical night‟s clubbing is recollected:

The fifteen-minute walk to the club took us away from the bright lights of the city

center into a dingy, run-down area of derelict buildings and empty warehouses...

As we rounded the last corner we were confronted with a mass of people queuing

to get into the same club as us. Some, we were told later, were even prepared to

queue for up to four hours. Fortunately we had VIP wristbands. Many of our

fellow clubbers were not as fortunate as the club operated a complicated queuing

system for those who just turned up... They were all vying to get noticed by the

fashion police as they patrolled the line, selecting individuals who stood out for

some particular quality – an outrageous dress-sense, good looks or some unique

talent, which many were keen to demonstrate… Some, when picked out, were

happy to leave friends behind while they were ushered to the door leaving the rest

to entertain each other as they waited their turn.

Once inside, there was a welcoming process whereby transvestite

hostesses employed by the club escorted us through the reception to the main

dance room. Here, an ocean of heat and noise engulfed us. My senses were

assaulted and my body literally started vibrating to the beat of the deafening

music. We split up and went our separate ways. The room was dark, lit only by

the strobe lights that darted in time to the music, alternating between beams and

sheets of electrified color. During these flashes, glimpses of silhouettes of the

heaving mass, moving as one, arms raised high, stabbing at the air, were revealed.

Clubbers dance as a whole, in a collective almost tribal enactment of spontaneous

but paradoxically, set moves. Suspended above the mass were dancers in cages,

while others gyrated energetically on top of podiums. The dance floor was

jammed all night.

In addition to the dance floor there were two bars. One served alcohol and

seemed to be empty for most of the night; the other sold bottled water and was

much busier. Clubbers are keen to avoid dehydration, a common problem on the

scene, largely as a result of excessive dancing mixed with Ecstasy. Conversation

was mostly non-existent, way too noisy, but this didn‟t seem to bother anyone.

Only in the toilets did people talk…about the music, the DJ and the effects of the

drugs. It was also here that drugs were openly dealt and taken…

Back in the main club, over the course of the night the music changed

tempo, varying from warm up club „anthems‟, to heavier „hard core‟ house at the

peak of the evening, to the trance like softer sounds that accompany the „chill out‟

period that signals the end of the evening. Hours passed in what felt like minutes.

I‟d danced non-stop – something I don‟t do normally – I was hot, sweaty yet




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exhilarated. As I regained my senses, I drifted off with some other clubbers to the

chill out room... In here, clubbers collapsed, exhausted and, possibly for the first

time during the course of the night, I engaged in conversation.

The themes discussed in this section develop and analyse the preceding

description of a night‟s clubbing. First, we outline the effects of Ecstasy and highlight the

centrality of its use for the experience of clubbing. Then, we identify how the clubbing

experience is negotiated between the club promoters, DJs and the clubbers themselves.

There exists an implicit understanding, a „knowing wink‟, between club promoters and

clubbers to maximize and co-create the possibility for pleasure; clubbers take Ecstasy and

club promoters maximize its effect through the design, organization and manipulation of

the clubbing environment. Whilst we present these findings in terms of the production

and consumption of pleasure this distinction is used rhetorically and does not reflect the

blurred boundaries evident in the co-creation of the clubbing experience. Ecstasy

The consumption of Ecstasy, often taken in combination with other drugs, is

integral to both the clubbing and rave experience and this may account for the similarity

in their experiential nature. In the UK at the height of the drug‟s popularity, it was

estimated that between ¾ and 2 million doses of Ecstasy were consumed each weekend.

Surveys suggest that 4% of UK 16-59 year olds – over two million people – have used

the drug in the general population, with this figure rising to 90% for those involved in the

club and rave scene (Cole and Sumnall 2003).

The maximal effect of the active ingredient in an Ecstasy tablet, MDMA (3,4

methylenedioxymetamphetamine) occurs about 2 hours after ingestion. Clubbers often

take their pills before entry into the club but equally it is not uncommon for seasoned

clubbers to pop pill after pill throughout a night‟s clubbing. Most clubbers we talked to

recounted the loss of their „E-ginity‟ fondly, as a rite of passage. The taking of the first

pill is often ritualized and E-gins are assigned experienced minders for the night whose

duty it is to look after their charges, making sure they enjoy the experience, and drink

enough water to avoid dehydration. The effects of Ecstasy build slowly to alter emotions

and produce the „loved up‟ feeling of closeness and connection with others. Veronica

recounts her story:

The first time I took Ecstasy I was very sceptical… Somebody gave me half a tab

and I remember taking it and wondering what all the fuss was about. There was

no „rush‟, no mind-altering sensation, nothing really. But then somebody

suggested getting on the dance floor and that‟s when the change kicked in… All

of a sudden I felt part of the beat, I couldn‟t stop dancing, yet I was totally in

control, or at least that‟s what I thought. When I‟d finished dancing, and believe

me that was sometime, I remember feeling very hot and sweaty but quite happy to

sit with a group of people that I wouldn‟t normally spend more than five minutes

with…they seemed interesting. I remember feeling affection for them, enjoying




10

the closeness… All this time I was saying, „I don‟t know what all the fuss is

about‟ and „it‟s had no effect on me‟ while the rest just grinned.

Ecstasy floods the brain with the neurotransmitter serotonin. On Ecstasy, on the

dance floor and amongst a mass of bodies who co-create and participate in a shared

activity, clubbers enter a temporary, altered state of consciousness that produces

„euphoria, changes in perception, relaxation and a reduction in negative affect and

defensiveness‟ (Cole and Sumnall 2003, p. 42) – all evident in Veronica‟s recollection.

This is a multi-sensual, highly emotional, extra-linguistic, stimulus-response like state

that suggests reflective, cognitive processes are temporarily inactivated (Greenfield

2000). We now turn to analyse how this temporary, drug-induced alteration of

consciousness is produced and socially enhanced.

Producing Pleasure

In this section we demonstrate how clubs are manufactured spaces where

architecture and design help to construct the clubbing experience, ultimately allowing

club promoters to carefully manage and control the production of pleasure for profit.

Similar to Allison‟s (1994) description of the Tokyo hostess bar scene, we show how the

club is constructed as an environment designed to separate work from „night play‟. The

process of separation and producing pleasure starts with promotional material promising

quasi mystical experiences, continues with queuing for entry, is enhanced by the

architecture and layout of the venue, is consummated on the packed dance floor where

the DJ reigns supreme, and concludes in the chill-out room, an interstitial space between

the dance floor, the club and the „real‟ world outside.

Promoting and Queuing for Pleasure; Club promoters, through their

reputation, brand image and club policies shape the clubbing experience from the start.

Before the advent of the Internet, flyers were the most common form of communication.

Promotional appeals set expectations, often drawing on the promise of quasi-spiritual

experiences. The names of club nights also hint at what is to come – Euphoria, Tribal

Gathering, Amnesia, Rezerection, and Renaissance, to name a few.

Queuing is a deliberate strategy to heighten anticipation, whilst concurrently

allowing the requisite time for any pre-ingested Ecstasy to start taking its effect.

Moreover there is no guarantee that even after queuing for hours the clubber will get in.

As we observed, clubbers, entertain themselves in the queue, fuelling a carnival

atmosphere, ensuring that those who gain entry have already embarked on a

transformative experience. Queuing also allows the security staff and the fashion police

to select who gain entry. They wear uniforms bearing the logo of the club and their role

owes much to traditional policing – marshalling the crowd, using equipment like walkie-

talkies, whilst CCTV monitors the queue. But ultimately, their authority lies in the fact

that they have the final say in who gets in and who has to wait outside. They patrol the

queue, teasing and even tormenting the would-be clubbers before selecting the lucky one,

often from a crowd of friends, who is then escorted triumphantly to the entrance, allowed

privileged access and an escort into the club. This process of selection is in stark contrast




11

to rave with its ideology of free and open access (so long as you know where to go). The

„chosen ones‟ happily leave their friends in the queue, content to become a member of the

clubbing elite for a night.

Hierarchies of control and authority are thus very evident in clubbing, with

organizers and promoters at the top of the hierarchy. They dictate the venue, set the price,

agree entrance policy with security staff and the fashion police and control behavior

inside the club. The combination of exclusivity and secrecy that they engender, fuels the

excitement and carnival atmosphere. However, their most important roles are to secure

the star attraction – the DJ – and to create an environment for unfettered pleasure.

The Architecture of Pleasure;: Clubs often draw on ecclesiastical

symbolism in their names, such as The Church, The Sanctuary, God’s Kitchen, The

Ministry of Sound, The Mission and The Rectory. The quasi-spiritual nature of clubbing,

alluded to in the promotional flyers, is further produced in the physical design of many

clubs especially those that inhabit former Victorian, neo-Gothic stone built churches, as

we describe in the following extract from field notes:

The Church is renowned as an early meeting place for clubbers… The building

itself is what its name suggests a church that has been converted into a feeder bar

specializing in dance music and exotic light shows. From the outside it remains

unchanged; a 19th century building, complete with stained glass windows and

neo-gothic architecture. The heavy, original oak door leads into the entrance,

which still retains the original thick wooden benches and a holy water font. A

second pair of doors leads into the main place of worship. Here the effect is

striking. The music, which is audible from the street, becomes deafening. Inside,

the sacred is turned into an assault on the senses. The pews where the

congregation would have sat have been removed, and to the left a bar runs the

length of one side. As incongruous as it all seems, it works. Everyone‟s attention

is focused on the pulpit where the DJ, in the guise of charismatic preacher, works

his congregation. The altar is transformed into a heavenly light show, shooting out

lasers that illuminate the stained glass windows whilst at the same time providing

the illusion of an electric rainstorm falling down on the crowd below. People

stand transfixed on the floor and in the galleries and it is hard not to share the

uplifting feeling that stems from the combination of sound, beat, light and

atmosphere.

The analogy between dance culture and religion is at its most obvious in these

converted places of worship, where the congregation (the clubbers) and the minister (the

DJ) are separated by distinct spatial zones and where the DJ metaphorically preaches

from the pulpit. However whilst, the clubbing environment draws on religious cultural

referents, it would be fair to suggest that clubbing is less a religion of the spirit or soul

and more a religion of the senses. Clubbing provides the illusion of spirituality in a

manufactured space with a managed and carefully orchestrated sense of sacredness. In

this sense, the music played in the club, the spatial organization of design and layout are




12

devices for social ordering – the behavior of clubbers is „mutually orientated, co-

ordinated, entrained and aligned‟ (DeNora 2000, p.109).

Pleasure on the Dance Floor: “God is a DJ”; On entering the club you do

not just hear the music you feel it vibrate up your feet and through your entire body. The

music bypasses normal cognitive processes of perception and communicates, „directly

with the body… taking us out of ourselves‟ (Jowers 1999, p. 385), and this has a

powerful effect on the crowd. The music alone, though, is not enough to achieve this, the

DJ has to mix, speed up, slow down and time the music in order to „work‟ the crowd.

Jackie:

A really good DJ can send the crowd into a frenzy. They work you up and then

bring you down again gently. They are in control…and they know it.

Many of those we spoke to described how they would travel miles to hear a

particular DJ perform his or her „sets‟. Major DJs are the superstars in the clubbing

system and they earn their place in the hierarchy through their ability to mix and

improvise, to take the audience out of themselves, to elevate them to another plane, all

through the power of the music. The music is mixed to hypnotic effect, aided by the fact

that it is based on beats per minute and not the voice. This adds to the trance-like effect,

„the further dance tracks are removed from the voice, the more likely it is that „trance

like‟ bliss can be achieved‟ (Jowers 1999, p. 387).

The DJ attains shaman-like status, entertaining and controlling the crowd, helping

to heal their anxieties and exorcize their demons and, as such, DJs attract cult like

followings. This analogy between shaman and DJ may be more than simply

metaphorical. The DJ is aware that he/she can lose the crowd or make the crowd „lose it‟.

The DJ is most in control when using repetitive beats to create feelings of total loss and

then using an anthem to facilitate love and togetherness (Jowers 1999; Rietveld 1998).

Chilling Out; Regardless of the venue, there is a set, time related dimension to

the clubbing experience. Towards the end of the night the music in the main dance area

becomes more „chilled out‟, signifying to clubbers that their night of pleasure is drawing

to an end – at least as far as the club is concerned. When clubbers have exhausted

themselves on the dance floor they can either go to the bar areas or chill out rooms:

Ian:

The chill out room is just what it says. You leave the main club area, go to the

chill out area and flop down on deep cushions or beanbags. No more dancing, no

more flashing strobe lights, just huge hypnotic lava lamps with their gentle

floating blobs bumping into each other and changing shape. It‟s a place to get

your head straight, get your mind into a different place. You drink plenty of water

and get your heartbeat back to normal while you let the soothing sounds of

ambient trance wash over you. You get ready to face the real world again.




13

Chilling out is highly ritualized and involves rites of separation that commence

either when the music is slowed down to an ambient trance or when clubbers leave the

dance floor for the chill out rooms. The environment of the chill out room is in stark

contrast to the dance floor, and consists of space that is soothing and calming – soft

furnishings, soft lighting and ambient music. The chill out room is an integral part of the

clubbing experience performing a dual function. It is a time and space that prolongs

feelings of pleasure and empathy – touch being the predominant sense – whilst also

acting as an interstitial space between the world of the club and the world outside the

club. Consuming Pleasure

In this section we examine the practices of clubbers that maximize the possibility

for their pleasure as they embark on a night of calculated hedonism – the anticipation,

planning and sharing of a night‟s fun (Measham 2004).

Anticipating and Preparing for Pleasures to Come; A night‟s clubbing is

predicated on preparation and importantly, anticipation of what is to come. As Carol

describes, her ritualized preparation kick-starts her transcendental and transformative

experiences to come:

You get more and more excited as the days go by and then the evening arrives.

Getting ready to go out is a long process. I'll get home from work on a Friday and

start to get my head together for what's ahead. I might drop a pill and put the

music on loud, you have to get yourself ready psychologically. Then I'll have a

bath and when I get out I'm usually starting to come up, this would be around 7

o'clock, then I'll wash my hair and start to think about what to wear… You get

terribly hot dancing, so I usually wear as little as possible, maybe a bikini top and

hot pants, it doesn't look out of place, by the end of the night you're dripping in

sweat so you have to dress down, but it's not sexual, it's just practical and it's fun.

Anyway, I'll get ready and meet up with my friends before we go into the venue,

maybe take another pill and hide the rest for later in the evening.

Carole‟s account involves the slow build up of anticipation and excitement as the

weekend draws nearer. On Friday, the world of work is left behind and a process of

separation from „normal‟ time occurs. Carole undergoes a series of mental and physical

preparation rituals or rituals of transformation (Belk and Costa 1998), symbolically

manifested in the dropping of a pill, physical pampering and the selection of what to

wear. She sheds her weekday identity and literally transforms herself into a clubber.

Clearly for Carole shedding her everyday self, the excitement and adventure of becoming

a different person, in dropping her everyday persona, is a source of much pleasure.

In Mark‟s case, this process of becoming someone else, a desire for otherness

(Belk et al. 2003), is important in terms of managing his work-life balance:

Everything is governed by the clock. You get up, face the traffic, go to work,

work to targets, worry about not meeting them, come home, crash out in front of




14

the TV, go to bed knackered and get up and do it all again. There has to be more

to life than that. It‟s a release, a temporary thing that allows you to share

something with others, get away from the rat race and feel that you belong.

For Mark then, anticipating a night‟s clubbing is also about the desire for sociality (Belk

et al. 2003), of looking forward to the pleasure of sharing an experience with others, and

in so doing managing the everyday reality of his rationalized, industrialized, time-space

governed existence. Indeed, just as the process of clubbing is controlled and managed,

clubbers usually have a sense of self-regulation whereby the anticipation and search for

pleasure, the rituals and drugs are based on a calculated predictability. Pleasure is not

only found in the club, but also in anticipating, planning, sharing and, fantasizing about

what is to come based on memories of past experiences – a cycle of pleasure.

Shared Pleasures: Sensual Communication; In the club environment

communication occurs through the senses, without recourse to the spoken word.

Andrew:

You just get on the floor and lose it to the music. You feel euphoric... It‟s like this

feeling of happiness and contentment. You look around and everyone is feeling

the same. You‟re on a different plane; you‟re all feeling it together. You don‟t

have to talk, you just know. You want to dance for hours and hours and make the

feeling last…You can share something without talking about it, you can

communicate on different levels. People are there for the music… for the vibe…

and there‟s the feeling of escape and freedom that comes with dancing and the

love drugs. Also there‟s no threat, no aggression, it‟s just something we‟re all

into together.

Andrew talks about the empathetic bond that exists between clubbers, which is felt and

shared without the need to verbalize the feeling. Ecstasy is an entactogen (Nichols 1986)

that literally means to touch within. Clubbers claim that on Ecstasy they all experience

the same feelings and this is instinctively understood. As we move on to explore,

clubbers communicate through the senses, touching each other, sharing the visual

illuminations whilst dancing collectively to and with the music.

Shared Pleasures: The Ecstatic Gaze; Inside the club the senses are

assaulted by waves of heat, sound and visual plays of light, smoke and space. The visual

impact is dramatic and constantly changing as laser beams freeze dancers in slow motion,

before changing to showers of electric rain and then again to multi-colored strobe lights:

Peter:

You take the Ecstasy for the enjoyment; I couldn't stand to be in a club without it.

It changes you, your way of thinking and feeling. You‟re not the same person,

everything and everyone is beautiful. You feel free and lifted; it makes the music

sound better… And the lighting, really cool ultra violet lights take on a whole new

look, you feel like you're in the light, everything just blends together.




15

Ecstasy heightens the senses and Peter describes how he enters an altered state of

consciousness, „losing himself‟ in the merging of light, sound and dancing. The visual

nature of the club constitutes a fantastic spectacle, filling space and time with alluring,

colorful, intricate and complicated surfaces (Handelman 1987).

Clubbers engage in acts of theatre, as both audience and performer, losing their

inhibitions in an orgy of sensation seeking experiences. This spectacle represents a series

of social relations among people, mediated by images, a combination of masquerade and

spectacle held together by a carnival atmosphere. There also exists the narcissistic

pleasure of being looked at. Those clubbers who gyrate on podiums or in cages

suspended above the dance floor, invoke the idea of the obverse panopticon, „a physical

structure designed specifically to enable the consumer‟s desire to be observed‟ (Kozinets

et al. 2004, p. 670). Participants, then, can play at being whatever or whomever they want

to be – juggler, French mime artist, angel or devil – losing themselves on a heaving dance

floor amongst the laser strobes and electric rain, giving in to a state of total abandonment.

Like Kozinets‟ (2002) Burning Man attendees and Belk‟s (1994) Halloween revellers

clubbing represent an inversion of the everyday, a fantastical display that borders on the

magical and paradoxical.

Shared Pleasures: The Tender Touch; One other sensory experience is also

intensified as a consequence of engagement and heightened by taking Ecstasy: touch:

Wayne:

You can‟t help yourself, you touch people on the arm, clasp hands, but there is no

expectation beyond the moment…It‟s like one great, massive group hug.

Feelings are not verbalized within the club – the noise precludes this. As Wayne

describes, people touch each other but not in any predatory or sexual way. Ecstasy in this

regard is an empathogen – a chemical capable of producing feelings of empathy with

others. It produces feelings of empathy, even between complete strangers, yet reduces

sexual drive and capability in both men and women (Cole and Sumnall 2003). Clubbers

stressed the non-sexual aspect of touch, with the touch of a hand simply an act of great

affection that can be reciprocated. The experience of Ecstasy removes the „normal‟ social

protocols surrounding personal space and intimacy and encourages a celebration of

physical contact unfettered by conservative codes of „acceptable‟ behavior.

Shared Pleasures: The Euphoric Clubbing Experience; In sum, clubbing

constitutes a highly euphoric consumption experience. This calculated, involving and

highly sought-after experience is facilitated by the consumption of Ecstasy, physical

exertion in the form of dancing and the sensorial overload facilitated through the

architecture and design of the clubbing environment. It can last between four and twenty

fours hours, is communal, highly sensuous, and consists of feelings of intense pleasure

and empathy that, in combination, produce an altered state of consciousness. By an

altered state of consciousness we mean that there has been a change in the „overall pattern

of mental functioning such that the experiencer feels different‟ (Tart 1972, p. 1203).




16

This description of a euphoric consumption experience is similar but different to

other highly emotional or hedonic consumption experiences. There is certainly evidence

of this similarity in, for example, the intense feeling states of Rook‟s (1987) impulse

buyers but by definition such behavior is fleeting and not calculated. Similarities also

exist with the extraordinary experiences of white water rafters (Arnould and Price 1993)

and the flow states of skydivers (Celsi et al. 1993), where communitas or sociopleasure is

also high, but the incidence of an extended altered state of consciousness is less evident.

Strenuous exercise too can also produce feelings of euphoria, as in the runner‟s high, but

this is more of an individual rather than a shared experience. The euphoria of the

clubbing experience is facilitated by popping a pill whereas flow states are achieved

through concentrated attention in developing particular acts of skill – skydiving, rafting

and through other practices like meditation for example – and these take time and effort

to achieve. Recreational drugs are a „quick fix‟ to achieving collective euphoric states and

this perhaps accounts for part of their appeal.

DISCUSSION

Our description and analysis of a typical night‟s clubbing clearly supports prior

understandings of pleasure. The clubbing environment is an orgy of excess where the

normal social protocols surrounding noise, space, physical proximity, light and

communication are exceeded. We now move on to discuss how our study informs our

understanding of pleasure in consumer research. In particular we develop the euphoric

nature of the clubbing experience – what we term „losing it‟ – as an example of a

biosocial understanding of consumer behavior. We then suggest that clubbing has

become a site of contained illegality and demonstrate how this concept contributes to

understanding the operation of marketplace cultures.

Losing It: A Biosocial Pleasure

The emotionally charged clubbing experience is a biosocial phenomenon, shaped

and contingent upon the ingestion of psychoactive drugs and the social nature of the

experience. Previous work has shown how the combination of repetitive electronic music,

extended periods spent dancing, and the use of Ecstasy can act as potent means to induce

a loss of self, a transcendence of the body and an experience of extreme pleasure (Gilbert

and Pearson 1999; Hill 2002). In the vernacular of clubbing, this kind of euphoric

experience is all about „losing it‟. For Greenfield (2000) the „it‟ in „losing it‟ is the mind,

what she calls the personalization of the physical brain through cumulative experience,

learning and memory. She argues that in such states the mind is switched off, returning

people instead to a more fundamental, child like, emotionally driven state of

consciousness.

The most common, legitimate, „switching off‟ agent is alcohol. The morning after

people have drunk too much alcohol, they often have problems recalling the preceding

night‟s events. In contrast to Ecstasy however, alcohol consumption has been shown to

increase aggression, volatility and variability in behavior (Steele and Josephs 1990). This

unpredictability is absent with Ecstasy, where the experience is largely constant for and

between users. Ecstasy is a powerful agent in enabling people to „lose it‟ yet without




17

many of the short-term negative social consequences associated with other agents like

alcohol.

Greenfield‟s (2000) account of „losing it‟ is appealing in many regards, however

she fails to recognize any benefits, however transient, of losing it and pejoratively calls

all users of drugs junkies. While we recognize the dangers associated with excessive

Ecstasy consumption, the vast majority of the clubbers we encountered were not junkies,

just as the vast majority of drinkers are not alcoholics. The clubbers we encountered came

from all walks of life and they were able to balance the excesses of the weekend with

their responsibilities. Indeed phrases like „losing your mind‟ or „blowing your mind‟

implicitly reinforce a Platonic ethics, the dominance of the pleasures of the rational mind

over emotional, embodied, experiential, shared, sensual pleasures.

For our participant Mark, the pleasure of losing it existed in relation to the

demands of his working life. Another of our participants, Lisa, talked of being two

different people: the polite, straight, constrained worker during the week, is replaced by

the clubber who goes „as mad‟ as possible at the weekend. In these senses then, we can

suggest that losing it becomes a means for people to rediscover empathetic community

through shared illicit risk taking, sensory stimulation, and ritualized, highly energetic

play. In the case of clubbing, this illicit risk taking is confined, ritualistically, in time and

space.

The club functions as social space in which clubbers can collectively move

beyond mundane subjectivities, and transcend the social categories that normally define

them – class, gender, age, occupation etc. Losing it engenders dissolution of the

individual self, as clubbers enter an extra-linguistic state, a state void of and beyond

words, and merge into the collective consciousness of the crowd. For the duration of the

clubbing experience, the language bound, everyday rules of communication are blurred in

a flood of sensory, shared experiences as perceptions are altered. Image, gaze and touch

replace everyday linguistic modes of communication. Whilst Booth (2004) presents a

powerful argument for the centrality of language, in particular rhetoric and the art of

discourse, as the means to promote social cohesion, our data support an obverse position.

As we observed the formation of clubbing communities occurs with little or no recourse

to the spoken word, yet they are equally cohesive, albeit temporarily. The clubbing

encounter induces a transformative, collective, altered state of consciousness with

clubbers moving and feeling as one. Our data suggest that the power of such

transformative experiences is limited to the duration of the collective experience. In many

cases clubbers have little to do with each other outside of the club. In this sense, clubbing

is „a controlled and enjoyable de-controlling of affect and emotions‟ (Elias and Dunning

1986, p.54) that salves and ameliorates the boring or repressive qualities of everyday life.

Like other extraordinary, high-risk or intensive affective forms of consumption, clubbing

achieves this through the provision of excitement and the possibility of a return to a more

primitive (Canniford and Shankar 2007), child-like (Belk 2000) or „reason-be-damned‟

(Belk, Østergaard and Groves 1998, p. 208) state of being.

Clubbing as Contained Illegality




18

Society and the marketplace provide many legitimate forms of pleasure for people

who are also required to exhibit discipline and rationalized restraint in their everyday,

working lives. What we have described and analyzed is a marketplace culture that is

legally sanctioned whilst supporting a range of illegal practices. Through the construct of

contained illegality we add a new dimension to the functioning and management of

pleasure and the operation of marketplace cultures. We have previously highlighted the

„knowing wink‟ that exists between the club promoters and clubbers and, in this section

we extend this complicity to the State authorities that grant licences to clubs.

Our historical analysis demonstrated that clubbing grew in popularity once rave

was made illegal, yet both are predicated on similar, illicit, drug-induced, pleasurable

foundations. Ravers though, as Andrew recollected, also experienced the illicit pleasures

of descending on various unregulated spaces and the „cat and mouse‟ games they played

with the authorities. Through underground networks, ravers sought to evade supervision

and surveillance as forms of organized ideological resistance. In this regard raves may be

considered as Temporary Autonomous Zones (Bey 1991), where people gather together,

temporarily occupy a space and then move on, only to reappear again elsewhere. The

TAZ is a microcosm of „free‟ culture, populated by similar thinking committed people

who collectively share an intense peak experience before parting (see also St John 2002).

Raves constituted untaxable, unstable and unpredictable pleasures that provoked moral

panic in the media and amongst State authorities that ultimately led to the imposition of

repressive, judicial forms of power (Foucault 1980). The identity of the raver was thus

codified, vilified and repressed through various State technologies. As we have seen these

included: legislative action that made the organization and practice of rave illegal; ravers

became the scourge of ideological state apparatus like the media, especially the right-

wing press; and Ecstasy was medicalized as potentially lethal and then criminalized

(Collin 1997; Foucault 1995; Parrott 2001; Reith 2004).

Clubbing subsequently emerged as a more legitimate environment in which to

experience the euphoric consumption experience of rave. Unlike rave, though, it is

orchestrated in predictable, regulated and manageable environments. However, alongside

these pleasurable practices, clubbing also supports criminal practices. At the height of its

popularity in the UK, gangs using intimidation, violence and even murder maintained and

controlled the supply of Ecstasy. At the same time, and before the State authorities would

grant licenses to clubs, promoters had to ensure that water was freely available (some

promoters would cut the water supply to the toilets to ensure clubbers bought water), that

each club had chill out rooms and that paramedics were on site (Collin 1997). In contrast

to ravers, clubbers and their illicit practices are constructed as acceptable and in need of

protection rather than prosecution.

Clubs have emerged as sites where illicit pleasures are reframed as commercial

and highly lucrative forms of restorative leisure (Elias and Dunning 1986; Rojek, 1995).

Clubbing can thus be considered as a form of contained illegality where the „ungoverned

mob‟ of rave is transformed and distributed towards a safer, more sanitized and

domesticated state of ordered multiplicity and productive delinquency (Foucault 1995).

By this we mean that clubbing (and its associated practices) does not eliminate illegality,

rather its effects are limited and its politics renegotiated – away from the ideological

resistance of rave and towards the politics of the market. Clubbing thus supports an




19

illegality that is easier to control and manage whilst at the same time is economically

productive.

Our data identify the techniques that localize illicit acts and channel them in the

direction of this ordered multiplicity. From the spatial and architectural organization of

clubs, through to the anticipatory and preparatory rituals, to those of the chill out,

clubbers are subjected to a variety of ordering technologies that reframe and enclose their

illegal practices. Through queuing clubbers are surveyed, selected and controlled with the

organization and management of the queue operating as a productive network, the effect

of which is to enhance the possibilities of anticipatory pleasure and the charismatic

pleasure associated with membership of an elite group (Elias and Scotson 1994). Once

inside the club, the organization of space in combination with the music, lighting and the

mass of bodies creates an obligatory rhythm (Foucault 1995) that unites clubbers, as they

move together as a coherent multiplicity. The club also acts as a site in which illegal drug

use is contained. The restorative aspects of effects of Ecstasy enable clubbers to

transcend their mundane everyday selves, whilst the rituals and learning processes

associated with its use, represent another means through which clubbers bind themselves

into a harmonious, asexual, non-violent, predictable union with other clubbers.

From these insights, we offer an alternative interpretation to the current emphasis

within the marketplace cultures program of CCT, that interprets consumption practices in

opposition to, or liberation from consumer culture‟s alienating and individualizing

effects. As our historical analysis showed, we found little evidence of this. The

marketization of rave into clubbing was founded on a Thatcherite spirit of

entrepreneurialism that is more in keeping with the spirit of capitalism than it is with any

countercultural ideology (see Heath and Potter 2004). In this light, we suggest that the

excesses and illicit practices of the clubbing experience are not oppositional or

reactionary. Rather, these practices can be seen as part of the cycle of everyday life; they

provide for the possibility of agency, excitement and creativity through the containment

of the illicit. Clubbing is a restorative leisure activity, like any other mainstream leisure

activity and unlike rave is not an act of countercultural ideological resistance. On the

contrary, we suggest clubbing is not only economically productive but socially

productive too. As we have noted, the containment of illicit pleasure exists only for a

night before clubbers return to the realm of the routine and the mundane. In a similar

manner to Bakhtin‟s (1984) carnivalesque, Elias and Dunning‟s (1986) folk games,

Foucault‟s Convicts‟ Sabbath (1995) or Gluckman‟s (1956) cohesion through conflict,

our work suggests that the temporary transcendence of normal, mundane life reaffirms

and supports it. To put it another way, rather than fundamentally disrupting society, the

containment of „losing it‟ practices like clubbing help, in the long term, to „establish

cohesion in the wider society‟ (Gluckman 1956, p.109).

To answer some of the questions posed by Kozinets (2002), our data suggest that

any anti-market discourse present in rave was, by and large, eliminated, with clubbing

and clubbers supporting the logic of the market. However, an effect of this marketization

process has been the subsequent re-emergence of rave. Reports in the UK press have

shown that the outdoor, illicit rave is alive and well, as contemporary ravers, too young to

have been part of the first wave of raves resist and reject the manufactured and

commercialized club scene described in this paper (Behr 2006).




20

Contained Illegality: Beyond Clubbing.

The application of the construct of contained illegality enables us to look afresh at

pleasure and its relationship with marketplace cultures. We note, for example, that

consumer research into drug consumption, tends to focus on its dark or negative sides,

most notably addiction (Hirschman 1992), and ignores its pleasurable aspects. We also

note that the very practices designed to control, restrain or regulate morally contentious

forms of consumption can have the opposite effect. As Prohibition in America clearly

showed, it would appear that, „the law of transgressing taboos remains a vital form of

consumer desire‟ (Belk 2000, p.117). In this light, the „knowing wink‟ practices,

highlighted in our study, contain rather than eradicate illicit consumption practices.

The Dutch government has pursued a policy of contained illegality in connection

with its drugs policy, designed to break the gateway effect – the progression from drugs

like cannabis to more harmful drugs like heroin. The Dutch have implemented de facto

decriminalization of its cannabis laws – possession of cannabis is still illegal, rather the

law is never implemented for amounts of 5g or less. Their liberalization process began in

the 1980s, when the illegal selling of cannabis was legitimized through regulation and

containment by the formal licensing of cafés in highly specific, designated areas only.

In relation to the containment of pleasure, there is evidence to show that it is not

just illicit behaviors that are subject to systems of containment and regulation but also

socially contentious consumption practices. Legalized prostitution, such as the Nevada

„Chicken Ranches‟, is contained through geographic location – rural rather than urban

locations. In other countries where prostitution is still illegal, there is a tacit

acknowledgement and acceptance that it exists, and it is contained in „red light‟ districts

or soliciting occurs „inside‟ in massage parlors or through escort agencies rather than

„outside‟ on the street (Weitzer 1999). In a similar vein, gambling is illegal in many US

states, however it is contained in geographically limited areas like Las Vegas, Reno or

Atlantic City. Like clubbing, Las Vegas offers an alternative reality, where adults from

all walks of life can collectively but temporarily disengage from their quotidian roles and

responsibilities in an act of transformation to a more infantile state (Belk 2000).

CONCLUSION

Our study of clubbing has enabled us to develop two contributions to the

consumer research literature: our framing of pleasure from a biosocial perspective and the

characterization of clubbing as a form of contained illegality. Pleasure as a construct

allows us to hold both a materialist and idealist ontology as we move along the arc of

explanation from Tiger‟s (2000) physiopleasures to sociopleasures. Through our concept

of biosocial pleasure we also extend out from micro processes through to macro forces, as

we move from, the individual experience of pleasure, to the social experience of pleasure

– losing it and euphoric consumption – whilst situating these pleasures within historical

context – contained illegality.

Over 25 years has elapsed since the seminal articles that put experiential and

hedonic aspects of consumption on the consumer research agenda. Such perspectives

were meant to enhance and enrich rather than supplant its alternative – the dominant




21

cognitive, information-processing perspective. We note however, and especially with the

emergence of CCT, a continued bifurcation of these two overarching paradigms. We

suggest that a biosocial perspective is an attempt to integrate parallel ways of

„interviewing‟ the co-creation of human phenomena such as pleasure. We hope that

research continues to develop this perspective in an attempt to bring future behavioral,

cognitive and neuroscientific studies together with social and historical studies.

Through the construct of contained illegality we have demonstrated the carefully

executed techniques of behavior management that can operate through marketplace

cultures. Such spaces and places can provide an alternative to the mundane, and in the

case of clubbing, an environment of seemingly unfettered restorative pleasure.

Concurrently however, such managed environments produce a series of ordering

techniques that contain illegality with the complicit, „knowing wink‟ of the police and

State authorities. In effect, there has been an unwritten domestication or tacit acceptance

of a morally contentious form of illicit pleasure – recreational Ecstasy consumption.

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