(see Grimes 1990:10). This approach facilitates a theoretical engagement with the
fluidity and creativity of raves and their socioculturally revitalizing effects.
The experience of connectedness at ravesThe catalyst for such revitalization appears to be the phenomenological experience
most consistently reported by ravers of an intense sensation of interpersonal and
sometimes universal connection between participants, often described as
‘connectedness’, ‘unity’ or ‘love’. Both popular and academic sources on rave and
rave-derived cultures have discussed this at length.^4 In the ritualized setting of a rave,
participants often experience profound feelings of communality, equality and basic
humanity, as Fritz so poignantly notes:
Although ravers don’t feel the need to give their superhuman power a name
or personality, when a rave ‘goes off’, everyone has a shared experience of
connectedness and hundreds or even thousands of people can feel like one
being with a shared purpose and direction.
(Fritz 1999:179)My own fieldwork on the rave experience in central Canada validated such statements,
which pervade written descriptions and personal accounts of the rave experience.
Not only did I witness and experience connectedness myself, but quantitative
analyses conducted in the collaborative study confirmed its existence. A content
analysis was performed on 84 ravers’ personal accounts of the rave experience, as
posted on rave websites by participants from Canada, the United States, the United
Kingdom, Germany, France and Australia. We also analysed 121 completed surveys
at more than 20 rave events in the cities of Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and
Quebec. Of the seven central themes of the rave experience emerging from the data,
connectedness was most frequently reported.^5
Other ethnographers of rave cultures have also written about the connectedness
or unity experience, recognizing its affinity with Victor Turner’s ‘communitas’. For
example, in research on raving as a spiritual/healing practice, Scott Hutson (1999,
2000) argues that the sense of unity and connection ravers claim to achieve
resembles Turner’s communitas, and facilitates healing at raves. On the post-rave
‘doof’ party movement, Tramacchi states that Turner’s ‘analysis of counter-cultures
is highly applicable to the contemporary developments of rave and doof...which use
rituals of alterity, ecstasy and community’ (Tramacchi 2000: 210; see also
Tramacchi 2001).
Without regarding rave as a single culture/subculture, as Hutson does, other
commentators make similar claims. Writing about the Australian biannual
alternative lifestyle event ConFest, a component of which is the rave-derived Tek
Know Village’, St John applies Turner’s communitas, yet finds it lacking in respect
of its homogeneity and non-corporeality (a critique he revisited with regard to rave
in Chapter 1 of this volume). As St John notes, some authors have high-lighted the
RAVE AS NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT? 85