Initial Thoughts

Hey pals!

I've just finish reading the posts by Emile and Patrick. And just to respond: I really do like the idea of looking at venues and how they govern peoples' behaviour on different nights out, although as Patrick said, this could get quite messy as venues usually put on a variety of things. However perhaps we could use this to our advantage? We could focus on one venue and see how behaviours change on different nights perhaps?

When this was first suggested the main thing that sprung to mind was the politics of leisure. Obviously, subculture is a huge part of the politics of leisure, as it dictates how you spend that leisure time. Going out usually seems apolitical, as it can be seen as a form of escapism from the mundane elements of every day life, but this is what's interesting. How different groups and subcultures view going out/leisure time, I think, provides a lot of other information on their ideas of things like; race, gender, work, class, sex. Nightlife is possibly one of the most straight-forward ways of looking the politics of certain demographics, as it is the 'freeist' one can be in their everyday activities. The main element though, is music. Music is the glue that holds subcultures and leisure together. The music you listen to on a night out is usually the core and dictates what kind of activities go on, and music is one of the easiest ways to differentiate between subcultures. This is kind of where it gets a bit convoluted I think, as we've mentioned 3 broad concepts; the politics of subculture, music and nightlife/going out. However, ultimately, what I think we are looking at, is the politics of leisure in the form of nightlife, how that differs in separate subcultures, then using music and a defining criteria for what those subcultures are. This is just my interpretation of it though, so please do add your suggestions!

But now, how we go about exploring that, is something we need to think about. I like what Emile said about looking at venues, as it is one element of a night out. However, there are a lot of other criteria that could be explored, like fashion, drugs, dancing/group behaviours etc.... Please feel free to list other ones too.

To get started on this I feel like it would be a good idea to brainstorm some of our own experiences on different nights out, till we all decide a specific factor we want to look at. I'll put up another blog post and we can write down our observations. Think of it as really basic casual field notes. :)