Future work should continue to explore how young people appropriate
ritual practices and techniques of power in order to solve the problems of
constructing and confirming postmodern identity. More specifically, the
nascent literature should probe the role that bodily experience plays in the
social psychological processes of identity formation and confirmation,
moving toward an “approach to sociology that takes seriously the fact that
the social agent is before anything else a being of flesh, nerves, and senses”
(Wacquant, 2003,p. vii). The study of music especially how music
weaves itself into social action (DeNora, 1999, 2003)should occupy an
important place in this research. AsDeNora (1999)and Hancock and Lorr
(2013)have noted, music forms both a “technology of the self” and a “tech-
nology of the collective,” which “informs people, quite profoundly, about
who they are and what matters to them” (Hancock & Lorr, 2013, p. 323).
For many postmodern youth, musicand the ritual activity associated
with itthus provides the scaffolding of identity formation
NOTES
- Although some social-psychologists make distinctions between self and iden-
tity (e.g.,Stryker, 1980),in this paper I use them interchangeably. Following the
work ofGlaeser (2000), I define identity as “the meaning of self to itself or to
another. My identity to me is what I mean to myself; my identity to you is what I
mean to you” (p. 9). - Giddens rejects the notion that Western society has moved into a novel phase
ofsocial development beyond modernity and thus uses the term “high modernism”
in lieu of “postmodernim.” Nonetheless, his research deals with the problems that
post-modernization holds for identity and selfhood. - Even prior to post-modernization,Stone (1962)arguedthat symbolic interac-
tionists maintained a “discursive bias” in their research and writing on self-
formation (i.e., they assumed that selves emerged primarily through processes of
communication as opposed to embodied practice). - Punk style has traditionally emphasized the profane, taking the form of
studdedleather jackets, colorfully dyed mohawks, dog collars, shredded clothing,
combat boots, body piercings, tattoos, and so on. - In punk’s case, the literature suggests that, feeling stifled by normative con-
ventions, most punks seek to challenge the idea that other people have the right to
determine the values to which they should adhere and how they should live. While
outsiders viewed the subculture’s profane style as portent for societal decline, insi-
ders utilized obscene standards in order to reject conventions, which they believed
limited self-expression. In performing these activities, they claim to cast rage against
the system in creative ways while rejecting conformity, questioning dominant modes
of thought, and achieving social and personal authenticity.
Ecstatic Ritual as a New Mode of Youth Identity Work 189