Introduction

The aim of this chapter is to present a critical evaluation of the various available ethnographic methodologies that can be utilised in a study of the relationship between contemporary dance culture and its televisual representations. In particular I will show how this evaluative process led me to reject simply "doing an ethnography" as a suitable research method, whilst also showing how an analysis of anthropological and ethnographic techniques eventually informed the method chosen for the in-depth study of the relationships between Liverpudlian dance culture and the youth television text BPM contained in chapter 6.

In particular the following two chapters represent a sustained attack on common-sense discourse, in that these chapters will show how young people’s relationships to both contemporary dance culture, and televisual representations of contemporary dance culture, are complex and sophisticated and highlight the degree of discrimination exercised by young people. These final two chapters will show how young people are not cultural dupes; they are not simply driven to cultural forms of little worth by unscrupulous commercial forces. These two chapters will show that young people are knowledgeable and discriminating in their cultural choices. As we have seen in previous chapters dance culture is not simply about mindless hedonism, but is about an engagement with social forces, and about, at least partially, a rejection of the current political order. In the following two chapters I intend to show that young people are as discriminating in their television viewing as they are in their music listening. Whilst dance culture participants actively reject the subjectivities offered by ‘mainstream’ society, they also reject the subjectivities offered by televisual representations. The following two chapters show how this process takes place.

Although the term ‘ethnography’¹ has become a "buzz-word" in Television Studies (see Lull, 1988, p.242), this type of research can often reap rich rewards in showing us how meaning is determined at the interface between text and audience. This is not to suggest that such a study can tell us the precise ‘meaning’ of a televisual text, merely that it can signpost the textual and discursive parameters within which the viewer decodes a text. Certain meanings can be suggested, and certain meanings discarded, by a well-researched ethnographic study. In particular, ethnography can be used to describe the habitus (Bourdieu, 1962) in which certain meanings are made, and the relationship between this habitus and the creation of meaning. The aim of my ethnography influenced research is not to ‘prove’ that context or habitus is an important variable in the creation of meaning. Rather it is my intention to contextualise a specific practice, namely the viewing of BPM, within the wider sphere of contemporary dance culture as outlined in previous chapters. If, as John Corner suggests, one of the initial reasons for the formation of media studies was the limitations of a purely textualist approach (see Corner, 1995, p.149), then an ethnographic study would appear to be an ideal tool for this very purpose. This is not to suggest that ethnographic analyses are more important than technological, historical or institutional analyses, merely that they are a valid accompaniment. This chapter therefore attempts to show how an interdisciplinary approach "can reveal more about dance culture and its televisual representations than an approach that merely relies upon one field of reference" (the ‘secondary aim’ of this thesis).

In my examination of the debates concerning audience response, it has become clear that it is not only acceptable, but also necessary, to avoid using any specific ‘meta-analytical’ techniques that have been validated and academically accepted by previous theorists. As we have already seen certain theoretical methods have been rejected by academia whilst they are still of use and relevance (such as the method provided by Goldmann and employed in the previous chapter). David Morley agrees with such a position, suggesting that questions of methodology are

Opposition to or acceptance of discourses takes place at the level of social consumption of texts. But how does this process work within a television text whose referent, contemporary dance culture, has been defined as oppositional to dominant discursive frameworks? In particular, previous chapters have shown us how there were contradictory discourses encoded within BPM. Of particular interest therefore is the extent to which viewers resolve, or attempt to resolve, these contradictions imbedded within the text. To answer this question, and to quote Ien Ang, "a move towards the ‘ethnographic’ - is desperately called for" (Ang, 1989, p.103).

If we accept that the meanings created at the interface between text and audience are, at least partially, determined by the information available to the viewer², then to study texts from a previous historical conjuncture would mean reference to discourses and knowledges that have a different cultural power. This is why I chose to complete ethnographic research on BPM, a programme that was contemporary at the time of the ‘viewing sessions’. As we have seen BPM was comprised of a mixture of pre-recorded footage at nightclubs and outdoor raves, interviews with producers and DJs, and promotional videos of dance music releases. As such BPM was designed by Music Box to appeal to the immediate post-club audience. This was confirmed by Simon Potter; "a lot of the clubs are closing at 2 o’clock around the country and people do want to continue their nights out" (Potter, 1995). As consumers of other media texts, such as magazines, clothes, and music-based products, the BPM audience were interpellated by a particular discourse of ‘youth’. To a certain extent therefore, viewers’ access to this discourse determined the meanings they created when they ‘read’ this particular programme.

However, and here we have a methodological obstacle, the referent of BPM was a culture that was in a perpetual state of change. Musical styles shift almost week to week. Last weeks’ DJ set is history, and as records emerge from ‘the underground’ and enter ‘the mainstream’, they lose their cultural resonance and importance within contemporary dance culture. In the previous chapter we saw how this speed of change is used by dance culture to resist commercial co-option. It is also used by cultural commentators to attack dance culture, comparing it unfavourably to ‘timeless’ texts situated within an acknowledged canon. Completely contemporary research on BPM is therefore impossible: contemporary dance culture explicitly rejects nostalgia, and any archival knowledge is drawn from musical texts, rather than visual representations.

Here is an example of how, once a track reaches the Top 40, it is neither contemporary nor relevant to dance culture. The track is Higher State of Consciousness, by Josh Wink, initially released in America by Wink’s own record company Ovum under the artist title Winx. This record provided the highlight for many a dance event in the summer of 1995, in particular the "Tweakin’ acid funk mix", with its innovative mix of a hip-hop break beat and high frequency acid lines. Initially, this record was not available for purchase in the UK. However, British distributors imported some copies of the record from America. The consequent cost of these copies, approximately £10-£12 for a twelve inch single, meant that it was financially beyond the reach of most ordinary consumers. However, to maintain their roles as cultural leaders, DJs are quite prepared to spend this amount on certain records, providing that they are of sufficient quality and are relatively rare in the UK. This phenomenon can be traced back to the Northern Soul scene of the 1960s and 1970s where rare American imports were sought after by DJs.

The massive dance floor popularity of Higher State of Consciousness led to the British record label Strictly Rhythm licensing it for release in the UK, and it was released on 9 October 1995 under the title of its creator, Josh Wink. Within a week the track had entered the UK National chart at number eight, thus guaranteeing it a spot on Top of the Pops, which Wink promptly turned down. However, the British release was promoted on the basis of a ‘radio edit’, and was markedly different from the "Tweakin’ acid funk mix" that was so popular during the summer of 1995. Dance culture members reacted against this move, and Higher State of Consciousness changed from an exceedingly fashionable dance floor classic to ‘commercialised’ pop song in the space of a fortnight.

Michelle Lanaway, a Liverpool-based journalist and friend of Wink, explains:

John Fiske suggests that "the meanings and pleasures of television are accented by the semiotics of its place of reception" (Fiske, 1990, p.89). Note Fiske’s use of the term ‘accented’, rather than altered. Perhaps a connection can be made between Fiske’s tentative suggestion and Voloshinov’s more rigorously defined concept of multiaccentuality. Using the linguistic theory of Voloshinov also provides an oblique connection to the Bakhtinian analyses that I applied in the previous two chapters³.

Voloshinov asserts that "the social multiaccentuality of the ideological sign is a very crucial aspect. By and large, it is thanks to this intersecting of accents that a sign maintains its vitality and dynamism and the capacity for further development" (Voloshinov, 1973, p.23). Perhaps this is why television is also perceived to have ‘vitality’, why it has the capacity to speak to us as individuals, and as members of a particular society at a particular time. Perhaps this is also why the subject positions offered by television are accepted by viewers: the viewer feels that he or she is being directly addressed. The concept of multiaccentuality allows us to examine the pleasure gained by individuals in the consumption of television texts, without reverting to the excessively individualistic and functionalist nature of a ‘uses and gratifications’ approach. This is a particularly important aspect in the study of youth television. Frequently youth television has a narrowly defined ‘target’ audience, but must avoid ‘narrowcasting’ to such an audience to the exclusion of what might be termed ‘secondary’ audiences. So in the case of BPM, the target audience was, roughly, the 16-34-year-old market, yet in 1995 its secondary market of 35 and over accounted for 46% of its total average audience of 80,000. Simon Potter, Producer of BPM, confirms that, whilst the production team of BPM are instructed by advertisers to aim at a specific socio-economic ‘market’, they nevertheless view their programme as of interest to other social groups;

Following the semiological and structuralist maxim that television is structured like a language, we can therefore suggest that there are a range of different meanings for different readers of a single televisual sign, without suggesting that these meanings have nothing in common with each other. We should remember that polysemy is systemic, it results from the properties of langue, the language system in which a specific sign is situated. Multiaccentuality however, is a property of parole, it is a property of the sign itself, the single utterance, the smallest unit of meaning. This is an important distinction, particularly when examining how polysemy works within a specific text. As Morley suggests, when signs are placed next to each other, polysemy is limited; "the construction of syntagmatic relations between... separate signs/words/images... (before the operation of textual closures) must act to narrow down the meaning-potential of the signs as they stand in isolation" (Morley, 1992, p.123).

It was my acknowledgement of the process of ‘accenting’, and the role context plays within this process, that led me to believe that the ‘viewing sessions’ that I wished to hold should be completed within domestic environments, and, due to the speed of change within dance micro-cultures, the texts should be viewed at the time of their transmission, rather than taking the form of a special ‘time-shifted’ screening. There were problems with this ideal scenario. Firstly, BPM, the text I intended to use, was broadcast early on Sunday mornings between 1993 and 1995, typically somewhere between 2 and 5 a.m., depending on the television schedule for that particular week. There were obviously ethical, practical and theoretical problems here. Firstly I would have to decide which domestic environment to use, my own or that of a viewer or group of viewers. If it was my own domestic environment would I be able to persuade a representative sample to visit a relative stranger’s flat at such an hour, and would the viewers be able to relax enough to watch the programme in the way that they usually did? What is more important, how could I guarantee my own safety and that of the viewers on their journeys to and from the viewing session? Any viewing session would require a discussion after the broadcast. How many people would be prepared to stay up until 6 a.m.? If the viewing sessions were to be held in the viewers’ own domestic environment, then what sort of people would be willing to allow a relative stranger into their home in the middle of the night? Would it be ethical to ‘invade’ the personal space of viewers at such an hour, and would such an invasion alter their reading of the text? The answers to these questions came once I approached people to take part in the study, and are outlined below.

When choosing a sampling technique, I was left with no alternative but to use a different approach to traditional ‘standardised sampling’ techniques, as I did not know the size of the ‘population’ of the culture that I wished to examine. My method was therefore as follows; with the purpose of finding potential interviewees, I went three times to a local dance club (which shall henceforth be known as Black Magic), and on the third visit I approached those people that I thought I recognised from previous visits⁵.

There were both positive and negative results of the "judgmental sampling" (Fetterman, 1989, p.42) described above. On the positive side, this method avoided any premature narrowing of focus that is occasionally caused by random samples. This method also meant that the participants that I approached were not casual observers but active participants in dance culture, in that they regularly visited the club, week in, week out.

One problem that did arise was that two of the people that I eventually selected for interview were employed by Black Magic; one worked as a promoter, and the other as a DJ. Other interviewees were also employed within contemporary dance culture; one worked in a record shop, one was a journalist, and another a lighting engineer. However, this did not necessarily mean that my sample was unrepresentative. As suggested in previous chapters, one prominent phenomenon within contemporary dance culture is the level of involvement that participants have in the production and distribution, as well as the consumption, of cultural texts. It is not unusual for people to take low-paid employment within a nightclub, for instance, helping out with the lights or distributing flyers, in order to secure free and guaranteed entry to the club. This factor actually enhanced this thesis; the comments of these interviewees were particularly incisive, and I maintained the regularity that I wished to achieve with my sample.

This facet of contemporary dance culture can also be connected to broader macro-social movements. Mainstream employment has undergone similar changes to dance culture; enforced flexibility, less job security, shorter contracts, and an overall move away from employment towards self-employment, combined with periods of short-term unemployment. This process has been visible for many years, with Charles Handy noting that

I could have avoided selecting employees and ‘semi-employees’ by explicitly rejecting some prospective interviewees once I had found out their occupations, or by only visiting the club once and approaching anyone that was dancing. However the former method would have meant that I was actively excluding certain people who were central to the micro-culture I wished to examine, and the latter method would have inevitably led to the inclusion of people who were not regular participants in dance culture. The responses of employees and ‘semi-professional semi-employees’ were particularly useful in that they were more fully conversant with the mores of contemporary dance culture, and had a stronger historical grasp of the cultural changes that are at work than other participants.

Once I had got my bearings in the club, I approached prospective interviewees and asked if, at some point in the future, they would be willing to take part in a real-time viewing session. Approximately half of the people that I approached said that they were willing to take part in some form of interview, but only four people initially showed any willingness to take part in a real-time rather than a time-shifted viewing session. This was not necessarily out of fear for their safety; merely that those with the energy to stay awake after the club wished to go on to an after-hours party or to relax on their own at home, and those who were tired wished to go bed. I was therefore limited to performing only one real-time session, consisting of one group of four people.

John Corner claims that ethnographic studies frequently "over-state the extent to which the removal of acts of viewing from the naturalised and fragmented flow of mundane use... creates an unacceptable degree of distortion in viewers’ responses" (Corner, 1991, p.279). Whilst this may be the case, context should always be viewed as an important determinant in the creation of meaning. Shown early on Sunday mornings, BPM was specifically scheduled to coincide with young people’s return from raves and nightclubs. Therefore, in viewing BPM, connections were made between the viewers’ recent activities on the dance floor and those shown on screen. However, the problems I came across meant that most of the viewing sessions had to occur at a more convenient time. This had one discernible effect. In the previous chapter part of my critique of common-sense discourse on the nature of contemporary dance culture was based on an analysis of Ecstasy consumption that suggested that Ecstasy use in contemporary dance culture was not a purely hedonistic activity devoid of meaning, but was, on the contrary, directly related to the drug’s homologous relationship to contemporary dance music. I then extended this analysis suggesting that there was a homologous relationship between music, drug and televisual representation. Due to the ethical, practical and theoretical problems outlined above it proved impossible to arrange an ethnographic interview with interviewees who were under the influence of Ecstasy. If a viewer of BPM is under the influence of drugs such as Ecstasy then this will alter their viewing strategy and the meanings they create when they interact with the text. Altering the psychotropic context of the viewing of BPM would therefore alter its meaning. This is one ‘context’ that Corner has not anticipated in his criticism of those ethnographers who are "wary" of special screenings (see Corner, 1991, p.279).

As far as the location of viewing sessions went, only one prospective interviewee showed any reluctance to watch BPM in a domestic environment. This female interviewee did however agree to the more neutral territory of a University seminar room, and the session was held there. All the other interviewees were given the option of completing the viewing session in their own accommodation, or in my own flat. Only three chose to watch the programme in their own accommodation, and seven chose to watch it in my flat. This initially took me by surprise, but then I realised that privacy, rather than safety, was paramount in interviewees’ minds. If they visited my flat, it would be my privacy that would be invaded, and I would leave the interview knowing nothing of their domestic life. I suspect there were also issues concerning policing at work here, in that the whole process was working on a ‘need to know’ basis. I did not need to know interviewees’ full names and addresses, and therefore my interviewees had greater peace of mind knowing that they were, essentially, anonymous.

Another methodological decision was whether to hold individual or group viewing sessions. Graeme Turner, in criticising the method of Morley’s Nationwide study, suggests that, in the group viewing environment, "it is likely that a consensualising process was engendered by the group itself" (Turner, 1990, p.135), referring to the degree of agreement between class-based and occupation-based viewing groups. Certainly this consensualising process occurs, but Turner ignores the fact that very often viewing takes place in groups anyway, and that, within these groups, viewers talk to each other about what they are viewing, and that a ‘negotiation’ of meaning between viewers takes place quite naturally. One aim of my research should be to examine the consensualising that went on when BPM was viewed in groups. However, I came across a major methodological issue: would my presence in a viewing session inhibit such a discussion, or would it engender a discussion different from one that might spontaneously arise? This question was never definitively answered, in that all viewing sessions were completed in my presence. It would have been impossible to do otherwise. Such a scenario would have at least involved my placing a tape-recorder into the hands of interviewees, and under such circumstances I would still be present ‘by proxy’ even if I was not in the room⁶.

In discussing the issue of ‘group ethnographies’, Morley quotes Pollock as stating that "the very assumption that there exists the opinion of every individual is dubious" (Pollock, 1955, p.233, see also Morley, 1992, p.17). In a similar vein, Seabrook suggests that "if people are asked about their opinions, they assume that they ought to have some, and obligingly evolve them on the spot" (Seabrook, 1973, p.47). There are two complex yet inter-related points here. On the one hand Pollock states that there is no such thing as ‘individual’ opinion, implying that opinion is socially constructed. On the other hand Seabrook suggests that ‘opinion’ is not necessarily in existence until formulated in response to a specific question. Either way, these criticisms cannot be levelled at my ethnographic study in that I am not attempting to examine viewers’ opinions about BPM, but attempting to discover what BPM, during its period of transmission, meant to young people; what discourses were ‘activated’ by the text, as well as examining the relationship between the dance floor, its televisual representation, and the audience for such texts. In earlier chapters I have suggested that the contemporary dance floor is beyond individualism. The ‘individual’ on the dance floor subsumes him or herself within the communal body. Within my viewing sessions the opinion of the ‘individual viewer’ is therefore not as important as in the viewing of other television genres, and the inclusion of group viewing sessions is entirely validated.

Whether viewing sessions involved groups or individuals was left up to the interviewees. If the interviewee suggested a group interview, as occurred on a few occasions, then I complied with this request, if an interviewee was happy with taking part in a viewing session on their own, then this is what occurred.

Another potential problem can be summed up by Ellen Seiter’s suggestion that television viewing is a "touchy subject" due to its connotations of laziness and its low cultural capital (Seiter, 1990, p.62). However to pay too much attention to this would be to ignore the specifics of my ethnographic study. I would suggest that, in the context of my research, a discourse that states that television viewing is ‘idle’ and ‘passive’ and associated with a lack of education and/or unemployment is less important than Seiter suggests for five specific reasons.

We can also see other supposed feminine traits in the ‘mass culture’ of television viewing, such as emotionalism and "subjectiveness" (see Huyssen, 1986, ch.1 and Modleski, 1986b). However what is important to remember is that these ‘feminine’ traits have a qualitatively different meaning in contemporary dance culture, and are not necessarily subjugated to ‘masculine’ reason and objectivity. Dance culture is pejoratively viewed as ‘mass culture’ by common-sense discourse, but its participants should not be too worried about this; for it suggests that its communality is in direct opposition to the kind of consumerist individualism that is often linked to the conditions of postmodernity and Thatcherism. The chain can then be completed by suggesting that dance culture can be mythically represented as a feminised unruly mass (in the same way that the original ‘masses’ were perceived to be feminine).

A connection can also be made between this analysis and the application of Bakhtin and Voloshinov in previous chapters. In previous chapters I have described how many dance culture participants are unable to translate their experiences on the dance floor into words. Experiencing this, Hillegonda Rietveld suggested that "language, that Apollonian creator of the symbolic order, was unable to catch the event" (Rietveld, 1993, p.63). If, as Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar suggest "‘the feminine’ is what cannot be inscribed in common language" (Gilbert and Gubar, 1985, p.516) then it is possible to suggest that the non-linguistic dance floor carnival is ‘feminine’. As I showed in chapter 2, dancing has always traditionally been linked to femininity (see McRobbie, 1984, p.143), and, in the case of contemporary dance culture, there is a specific rejection of ‘traditional’ masculinity (see McRobbie, 1993, p.419).

Morris attributes the negative connotations of passivity and the ‘feminisation’ of distraction to cultural studies itself. However, such a discourse has been mobilised since the popularisation of television in the post-war period. It is not cultural studies but society as a whole that mobilises a connotative chain that runs from television viewing, through passivity, to femininity. Here is an example from a letter written by John Ruskin in 1872, where Ruskin passes comment on the behaviour of two American girls on a train from Venice to Verona;

Deliberate passivity is viewed as unacceptable by common-sense discourse. For instance Glasgow Councillor Jim Coleman has waged a one man war against ‘chill-out rooms’ in Glaswegian nightclubs. As we saw in chapter 1 the Public Entertainments Licenses (Drugs Misuse) Act of 1997 encourages the provision of chill out rooms. However, Councillor Coleman is quoted as saying "if we allow chill-out areas, we will be sending a signal that we accept the existence of a drugs culture within the city and within the licensed premises that we’re supposed to give licenses to" (in Pemberton and Petridis, 1996, p.15, see also Udo and Willmott, 1996, p.9).

It is, however, Coleman who is making the connection between Ecstasy and ‘chilling out’, rather than dance culture itself. Kathleen Turner, Policy and Publications Officer for the government-sponsored Scottish Drugs Forum, states that "some young people at dance events suffer from dehydration whether they take drugs or not. Chill out areas are a basic part of club runners’ customer care" (in Pemberton and Petridis, 1996, p.15). Even Michael Forsyth, Conservative Secretary of State for Scotland in the mid 1990s, and Kevin Orr, Head of Strathclyde Police Drug Squad, have stated that they approve of ‘chill out’ areas (see Faulds, 1996, pp.22-4). This has been ignored by Coleman, who, paradoxically, continues to connect Ecstasy, a stimulant, with passivity. Perhaps Councillor Coleman’s campaign is motivated by an attack on the deviance of ‘chilling out’ as an activity in its own right, rather than an attack upon Ecstasy consumption per se.

In summary then, my argument concerning passivity and television viewing is that television viewing is not a passive process, especially among my interviewees (who actively deconstruct their readings during interview, and who actively criticise BPM). Secondly I would suggest that passivity within contemporary dance culture is also a mode of resistance.

One major methodological issue that must be dealt with is the question of ‘oppositional readings’. This problem stems from the academic dominance of Hall’s reformulation of Parkin’s theory of ‘preferred readings’ (see Hall, 1980, pp.138-148, see also Parkin, 1971). It is my intention to avoid categorising the readings of my interviewees as "preferred"/"dominant", "negotiated", and "oppositional". To justify my rejection of these categories, ubiquitous as they are in media studies, I need to provide a critical justification, and this section is intended to perform this function.

BPM is seen as promoting a ‘deviant’ culture. Karole Lange, a former programme development executive at the BBC Department of Youth and Entertainment Features, suggests that the dominant view within the higher echelons of the BBC of ‘youth television’ is of programming that is low quality, amateurish, and opposed to the discourse of public service broadcasting (Lange, 1994). Within journalistic and common-sense discourses, the audience for programmes such as BPM are either considered to be patronised by banal nonsense (cf Brown, 1992), or are viewed as lapping up mindless messages due to their much touted three-second attention span.

Both the form and referent of televisual representations of the dance floor are attacked by forces quite willing to resurrect the discourse of ‘youth as folk rebel’ that I have re-evaluated in chapter 2. However, and this brings us to a central difficulty if I was to apply Parkin and Hall’s method, if a young person provides an ‘oppositional’ reading of a youth television programme, for instance one that suggests that BPM represents an immoral and corrupt youth culture, then to what extent is this ‘oppositional’ in the sense provided by Parkin and Hall? Although in ‘opposition’ to the youth television text, the young person’s reading falls neatly within what used to be termed ‘the dominant ideology’.

Evans explains;

Perhaps the problem here is not one of the characterisation of the text-reader relationship as producing either preferred, negotiated or oppositional readings, but is the fact that a "dominant ideology" is not encoded in programmes such as BPM. This is certainly the view of Simon Potter, Producer of BPM, who, as we saw in chapter 3, maintains that BPM did its best to put across radical ideas, and, at times, was directly critical of Conservative and Labour policy on, for example, the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994. Perhaps yet again we can refer to both Althusser’s notion of "overdetermination" (see Althusser, 1969) and Marx’s statement that "men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please" (Marx, 1967, p.10), whilst combining these with the Gramscian notion of consensus. The production of BPM was ‘overdetermined’ by I.T.C. guidelines, but within this Simon Potter and his team made their own history, and attempted to position themselves as a radical voice. At the end of 1995, with BPM dropped from the ITV schedules, Potter spoke openly about how he saw the BPM production team as at least partially autonomous from the ITV network and the ‘mass media’;

As on other cultural terrains this consensus included and excluded social groups, and was ‘balanced’ around a position that favoured the reproduction of the status-quo. It is this ‘balance’ across the schedules that allowed BPM to criticise government policy directly. News and documentary programmes inevitably supported the cross-party ‘consensus’ on contemporary dance culture (thereby implicitly supporting common-sense discourse on the nature of contemporary dance culture), and cross-schedule balance was maintained. During 1993-5 dance culture was included within the schedule, within the broadcasting consensus. Yet, as of 1996, the forces of commerce, and a concern about the connection between dance culture and drug culture, led contemporary dance culture to occupy the space of the deviant ‘other’, excluded from the schedules, excluded from the consensus.

The issue of ‘oppositionality’ also ties in with some of my earlier comments on ethnography. How do we do ethnography now that we have lost any notion of ideology? I can see dangers appearing here. One danger is falling into what Corner has termed "descriptivism", whereby ethnographic studies are unable to connect with wider power structures due to a commitment to studying the ‘everyday’ (Corner, 1995, p.152). Another problem is the Althusserian bias of certain elements of media studies. The problem arises not from Althusser’s For Marx (Althusser, 1969), where we find the notions of overdetermination and relative autonomy that have appeared throughout this thesis, but from the essay ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses; Notes Towards An Investigation’ in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (Althusser, 1971). Indeed it could be suggested that the problem does not even arise from Althusser’s more generalised notion of ideological reproduction to be found in the first half of his essay, but arises from his analysis of the precise mechanisms of ideological reproduction, namely the ‘misrecognition’ of one’s self in the process of interpellation, an analysis that sees the influence on Althusser of his tutor, Jacques Lacan, and beyond to Lacan’s inspiration, Freudian psychoanalysis. It is this part of Althusser’s work that has had the most influence upon media studies, in particular what became known as ‘Screen theory’ after the journal of the same name. If we were to employ the terms used by Althusser in his essay we would suggest that BPMis a part of an Ideological State Apparatus interpellating a group of people who have been criminalised by a Repressive State Apparatus. Such an analysis is surely erroneous.

To raise these questions is to re-evaluate one of the defining strands of media studies and cultural studies. If one of the founding principles of media studies was that the discipline was a political project to expose the workings of the "dominant ideology" in media texts, then when a coherent "dominant ideology" is noticeably absent, what is there left for the media academic to do? Perhaps the answer is to reject an individualist model of television consumption, as Luis Rivera-Perez does in his essay ‘Rethinking Ideology: Polysemy, Pleasure and Hegemony in Television Culture’ (Rivera-Perez, 1996), and to reject an economic determinism that suggests that all television texts are by their very nature ideological. This is not to reject Althusser per se. It could be suggested that the broadcasting ISA is not interpellating the televisual reader, but, through the ideology of independent commercial broadcasting, the broadcasting ISA is interpellating the production company itself. It is Potter and his team who are forced to accept an ideological position, not the BPM audience. Potter is of course aware of this, he railed against targeted audiences and I.T.C. guidelines on impartiality when making BPM, yet he accepted them nevertheless.

Throughout this chapter I have used the term ethnography to describe the process by which I intend to examine the audience for BPM at close quarters. As my examination of method and methodology continued, and as my audience research began, it became apparent that my usage of the word ‘ethnography’ was incorrect.

Firstly my method was not strictly ethnographic in that it did not conform to the leading definition of ethnography as "the work of describing a culture" (Spradley, 1979, p.3, see also Seiter et al, 1989b, pp.226-7). The written report of my interviews in chapter 6 is not merely descriptive, it is also analytical⁸.

Secondly, according to Seiter et al, "ethnographies are based on long-term and in-depth field work" (Seiter et al, 1989b, p.227). My audience research does not fit into this definition for two reasons. Firstly, my research was not ‘long-term’ in that data collection was completed over a period of months rather than years. Secondly, much of the data contained in chapter 6 was not collected in the ‘field’. Seiter et al suggest that

James Henslin uses a different language to address what is essentially the same ‘problem’, namely

In a sense I occupy a dual role within this debate. In the previous chapter I was directly observing cultural phenomena, and placing my observations within analytic frameworks derived from (amongst others) Mikhail Bakhtin, Lucien Goldmann and Theodor Adorno. During the data collection for the next chapter, I was interpreting other people’s responses to a cultural representation (BPM). Research for earlier chapters might well be seen as representing a more anthropological approach, whilst the research for chapter 6 fits more into the category of ‘media ethnography’ and audience studies. What links both these approaches is a move away from ‘objective’ ethnography towards a more reflexive and discursive approach¹⁰.

My research does retain some links with ethnography in that it involved an extended period of observation. It has, however, gone beyond this. I do not merely describe a culture from the outside, I am not merely an ‘innocent’ observer. Equally my interviewees do not neatly fit into any of the four main categories provided by ethnography; respondents, informants, subjects and actors.

For the various reasons outlined above, this project did not conform to any of the leading definitions of ethnography. I have rejected any notion of the discursive audience as defined by the text itself. I have rejected the empiricism of classical ethnography. I have rejected notions of activity and passivity as defined by both common-sense discourse and media and cultural studies. I have also rejected the media studies’ emphasis on ideological texts interpellating the individual viewer. I intend to emphasise a coherence between readings, rather than emphasising, as some theorists do (i.e. Fiske), a multitude of different individual readings. This project therefore requires another name. I did consider Clifford Geertz’s term ‘thick description’, but rejected it due to its universality; I wanted something that was specific to this project (and something that emphasised this specificity). I have chosen the term ‘ethnoanalysis’. The prefix ‘ethno-’ indicates, amongst other things, culture (see Hanks, 1986, p.524), which is precisely the object of my study. The suffix ‘-analysis’ emphasises that this project is not merely descriptive¹³. The whole term suggests connections with, yet a difference from, ethnography itself.

As described in the opening chapter of this thesis, the social group from which my interviewees are drawn is, at least partially, criminalised. This had caused me some concern, particularly in my role as a participant observer of this social group. However, the consumption of recreational drugs or attendance at events that contravened the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994 was not required in order for me to fulfil my duties as a participant-observer. ‘Participating’ in this context meant participating in discussions about events, rather than participating in those events themselves. Ned Polsky agrees; "successful field research depends on the investigator’s trained abilities to look at people, listen to them, think and feel with them, talk with them rather than at them" (Polsky, 1997, p.219). John Irwin explains further; "in the observation of criminals in their natural setting, what is important is not so much seeing every facet of their lives, as being present when ‘normal’ discussions take place" (Irwin, 1972, p.120)¹⁴.

Whilst I am aware that there are concerns that the sociologist might ‘go native’ when studying ‘deviant’ cultures, I defend my research on contemporary dance culture because it has enabled me to provide a critique of common-sense, academic and televisual discourses, and has allowed me to compare and contrast a lived culture with its televisual representation¹⁵. Dance culture is attacked within the British media for its drug consumption, and it is often blamed for deaths connected with drug use¹⁶. Within this research ‘going native’ therefore refers to the consumption of Ecstasy.

However, whilst Ecstasy use is inextricably linked to contemporary dance culture, contemporary dance culture is not, in itself, the ‘cause’ of Ecstasy use. With the exception of BPM, televisual, journalistic and common-sense discourses on dance culture see nothing but Ecstasy consumption, and if I am to provide a critique of these discourses then one aim of this thesis should be to put Ecstasy consumption back in its place as merely one component of contemporary dance culture. In previous chapters I have gone to considerable lengths to describe the complicated relationships between Ecstasy and contemporary dance culture, and in this process I have shown how monocausal explanations for complicated phenomena such as Ecstasy consumption are naïve and simplistic.

When we compare and contrast discourses on rock culture and contemporary dance culture, then a difference becomes apparent. Rock culture is supported by the State as a valuable export and part of our cultural heritage, it is held in high regard by the great British public, and thousands of column inches are written on this unique part of British society. In particular 1997 saw the rise of the phrase ‘Cool Britannia’ with the newly elected Labour government forming a cultural industries task force to regenerate Britain’s economy, and enable Britain to develop a sense of national self-esteem. This task force is headed by leading figures in the rock industry such as Alan McGee of Creation Records. It is worth noting that the rock band Oasis are signed to Creation, and McGee is a close confidant of Noel and Liam Gallagher, two Burnage boys famed for their drug consumption. Noel Gallagher was even received by Tony Blair at No.10 Downing Street despite his reputation. Contrast this state of affairs with dance culture. Contemporary dance culture is viewed as a deviant culture, and has been criminalised by Parliament and marginalised by the media¹⁷. Perhaps the ‘revolt into style’ process outlined in the previous chapter will happen to contemporary dance culture as a whole, but at the moment this looks a long way off. It has taken thirty years for this process to occur with, for instance, The Beatles. Vilified for their use of psychedelic drugs by the press and the state (Liverpool City Council once refused to erect a statue of the band due to reports of the band’s drug use) they are now national heroes, fondly cherished by, amongst others, The National Trust, who have just purchased Paul McCartney’s old home in Liverpool. But the press, when commenting on dance culture, have ignored the central message of the revolt into style process undergone by The Beatles, and by rock culture in general. Participation in dance culture, and participation in rock culture, does not necessarily lead to drug use. Whilst being linked to Ecstasy consumption, dance culture goes beyond it, and is as invigorating as the rock culture that historically preceded it.

When common-sense and televisual discourses link dance culture and Ecstasy consumption they serve to isolate contemporary dance culture from the rest of society. As Becker suggests

Beyond the legal issues mentioned above, there were also other ethical and methodological problems. For instance how could I gain the trust of interviewees? How could I get the inside information that I required on, for instance, the role Ecstasy has in their television viewing? If I had been researching a more ‘traditional’ criminal subculture the short-term nature of my research might well have been a hindrance in this respect. However, I did gain the trust of my interviewees relatively quickly. I informed potential interviewees that everything that they said would remain confidential if they so wished. This, combined with my age and appearance¹⁹, meant that I was perceived to be trustworthy. Interviewees wanted to give me the information that I required to tell the ‘outside world’ that their culture was a creative, invigorating and innovative one. Participants in contemporary dance culture want and need a critique of common-sense and journalistic discourses. Most interviewees were not necessarily concerned about hiding their identities or their criminal activities. Whilst altruism was a major motivation of my interviewees (as it often is in ethnographies of deviance), it was not the case that I always remained an ‘outsider’²⁰. Interviewees did not treat me as such once they became aware that I had considerable knowledge of the ways and mores of dance culture. The position of ‘insider’ is to be expected towards the end of most participant-observation research projects; the researcher becomes part of the world that he is researching. In the research for this thesis, this occurred earlier than is usual.

Indeed it was my knowledge of, and participation in, contemporary dance culture that caused me more concern than the possibility of always remaining an outsider. However, whilst doing participant observation, and whilst talking to interviewees, I was able to step back and view dance culture from the perspective of an academic. It was this ‘dual perspective’ that proved particularly fruitful. As an insider I could be trusted, and gained access to the ‘meaning world’ through observing and listening to interviewees. As an outsider I could also relate interviewees’ conversations about contemporary dance culture and television to the production of television and the world of cultural and social theory. I was able to step back, to view the big picture, to examine the mechanics of macro-cultures as well as micro-cultures²¹. This dual role is quite a traditional one within ethnographic research; for instance Jack Douglas talks of the advantages of comparing the information gained as an observer of a culture with that gained by being a member of the same culture (see Douglas, 1972b)²².

In summary then, my examination of ethnographic methodology led me to approach regulars at one specific nightclub in Liverpool and ask them if they would be willing to take part in a tape-recorded viewing session of the television programme BPM. I approached thirteen potential interviewees (or pairs of potential interviewees). Only one potential interviewee refused to take part. Interviewees were left to make the decision as to the location of their interview, and whether the interview was to be done on their own, or with friends. Eleven viewing sessions were arranged by telephoning those prospective interviewees that had expressed a willingness to be interviewed. A further session would have been held, but on telephoning the number supplied by the prospective interviewees, I found that they had moved. Ten viewing sessions were situated in the domestic sphere; seven were held in my flat, and three were held in interviewees’ flats. One interview was completed in my office at Liverpool John Moores University.

At the time of the interviews, my apartment in Liverpool was a one-bedroomed flat with a small living room that could seat four interviewees and myself. I had a relatively cheap 20-inch colour television and video recorder, certainly nothing that would look out of place in the living rooms of my ‘target audience’. I also had a CD-based hi-fi system if the interviewees wished to listen to music either before or after the viewing sessions. Here I echo Paul Willis who, commenting on the centrality of music to his interviewing technique, suggests that "by and large, the taped sessions fitted in well, since listening to records and talking is precisely what they would have been doing anyway" (Willis, 1978). Listening to music in small groups is an important element of contemporary dance culture, and most of the viewing sessions started with an informal discussion with appropriate music playing in the background. As David Fetterman suggests a "naturalist approach avoids the artificial response typical of controlled or laboratory conditions" (Fetterman, 1989, p.41).

‘Time of viewing session’

Due to the practical and ethical problems described earlier, the majority of viewing sessions were not completed at the time of transmission of the selected programmes, but were time-shifted.

‘Collection of Data’

Lull suggests that, during an ethnographic study, "specific references to the objectives of the research program should not be made" (Lull, 1990, p.179). This however directly conflicts with Spradley’s statement that "informants have a right to know the ethnographer’s aims" (Spradley, 1979, p.36). Whilst bearing in mind both these statements, I gave the interviewees a brief description of the aims of my thesis during my initial discussion with them at Black Magic. So, come the actual viewing session, interviewees were already broadly aware of what was required of them. Before starting the cassette recorder, and after settling down with a cup of tea (which was, without exception, drunk before each interview), I asked what Spradley and McCurdy term a "grand tour question" along the lines of "how do you think television deals with dance culture" (see Spradley and McCurdy, 1972). These brief discussions are not presented in the written reports found in chapter 6. This is because the primary objective of these preliminary discussions was to encourage interviewees to begin talking before the programme was shown, so that the first five minutes of the programme were not filled with an embarrassed silence.

Lull states that "the observer must not lead conversation or direct behavior" (Lull, 1990, p.179). I let the interviewees make the first move in any discussion during and after the viewing of the text, and asked ‘follow up’ questions to clarify the interviewees’ points, and to direct the conversation onto my research agenda. These follow-up questions often took the form of what Henslin describes as ‘reflection’, whereby the interviewer picks up a phrase used by the interviewee, and asks them to elaborate upon what they meant by it (see Henslin, 1972, p.74). However, it must be said that the result of these follow up questions was often a generalised unstructured discussion. Such a situation is not only unavoidable, but positively desirable. As Polsky states, successful field research "does not depend fundamentally on some impersonal apparatus, such as a camera or tape recorder or questionnaire, that is interposed between the investigator and the investigated" (Polsky, 1997, p.219).

The recordings of the interviews were selectively transcribed within 24 hours of the interviews taking place. In the case of group interviews, this transcription process by-passed the problems of speaker identification and the need for expensive ‘multi-track’ recording facilities. This recorded verbal data was supplemented by note-taking. I use the word ‘supplemented’ carefully; this information was intended to back up the tapes. I also made brief notes immediately after each interview²³.

1.Danny Saunders provides a useful definition of ethnography in the context of ‘communication and cultural studies’, suggesting that ethnography is

4.An example of this is Fiske’s book Television Culture (Fiske, 1987), where Fiske attempts to show how television viewers resist a text’s ideological closure, and are left free to determine meaning. In doing so Fiske appears to have developed a kind of Foucaultian pluralism. Firstly, Fiske appears to suggest that viewers are completely free to determine the meaning of a specific set of televisual signifiers (pluralism), and secondly, he appears to suggest that the ideological power of the text inevitably creates resistive readings (c.f. "wherever there is power, there is resistance", Foucault, 1979, p.123).

5.My reason for changing the name of the club is that I subsequently found out that some of my interviewees were employed by the club, and I felt that they would be more likely to co-operate if the name of the club was not mentioned in my thesis. This name changing follows in the tradition of the Mass-Observation group changing the name of Bolton to ‘Worktown’ in The Pub and The People: A Worktown Study (1943). Another example is Robert and Helen Lynd’s anthropological examination of a ‘typical’ American city, Middletown in Transition, where Muncie, Indiana was renamed ‘Middletown’ (see Lynd and Lynd, 1937). Both Lynd and Lynd and the Mass-Observation group were attempting to highlight the typicality of Indiana and Bolton, and I would suggest that this is also the case with my research; Black Magic is a typical British techno club, with many of its weekly guest DJs playing at other clubs around the country.

6.The only other possibility would have been to have tape-recorded interviewees’ conversations without informing them. In my view this would have been unethical, and I therefore rejected this option immediately. Despite these problems, I feel that certain sessions did have a high degree of realism (in the popular sense of the word), and, in the results contained in chapter 6, I have indicated when I felt this occurred.

7.There is one honourable exception in Paul Corrigan’s Schooling the Smash Street Kids (Corrigan, 1979). Corrigan suggests that some of his work could

8.It is interesting to note that John Caughie suggests the opposite, and claims that ‘undisciplined’ ethnography lapses into ‘description’ and consequently moves away from ‘evaluation’. In particular Caughie criticises ethnography’s relocating of ‘value’ onto consumption (see Caughie, 1991). This is not the purpose of my ethnographic work, which is to examine the creation of meaning. My notion of value is outlined in previous chapters, and is not necessarily linked to what happens at the interface between text and audience.

9.In the 1993/4 period, between 11% and 15% of those aged between 16 and 24 were in full-time education. These students spent an average of £23 a week on ‘entertainment’ (including CDs, tapes and videos). The social category of ‘student’ is therefore a significant one in British society, and one of the primary sites and primary determinants in contemporary dance culture. This is particularly noticeable in large university towns and cities where many dance culture venues run into financial trouble over the summer due to a decline in the student population (figures from Social Trends, 1996).

10.For a brief summary of the shift in ethnography from ‘objective’ studies towards a more ‘dialogical’ approach see Cohen, 1993, pp.123-5.

11.John Irwin gives a definition of an informant that appears to contradict Spradley’s. Irwin suggests that the difference between an informant and a respondent is that the informant can distance him or herself from their normal ‘position’ and see the object of study from the researcher’s point-of-view (see Irwin, 1972, p.136, see also Campbell, 19955, pp.339-342). This phenomenon would be impossible if the informant spoke in another language as Spradley suggests.

12.The use of ‘subject’ is also problematic due to its use in ‘subjectivity theory’ within media studies, and due to its perceived emphasis on the individual.

13.Geertz’s defines analysis as "sorting out the structures of signification - what Ryle called established codes, a somewhat misleading expression, for it makes the enterprise sound too much like that of a cipher clerk when it is more like that of the literary critic - determining their social ground and import" (Geertz, 1973, p.9).

14.To have employed what Fred Davis has termed the "Martian situation" (quoted in Douglas, 1972b, p.18), or what Clifford Geertz describes as "I-am-a-camera ‘phenomenalistic’ observation" (Geertz, 1973, p.6) would have been impossible with this research. However past participation in dancing during previous leisure time does not necessarily mean that the resultant research is not objective. The point I make here is that the "Martian situation" is an impossible one to hold in this context, I already had knowledge of, and was a participant in, contemporary dance culture, and could not deny this knowledge.

15.Interestingly, Jack Douglas suggests that in ‘going native’ the ethnographer becomes a spokesperson "for moral interest groups rather than seek[ing] objective knowledge of those groups" (Douglas, 1972b, p.4, author’s original italics). Within my thesis, these two processes work together; I have sought objective knowledge so that I am able to defend dance culture from attacks based on ignorance and prejudice. Further to this, knowledge itself within dance culture is participatory rather than ‘subject’-based. The term ‘trainspotter’ is used within dance culture to humorously categorise someone whose knowledge is based upon catalogue numbers, facts, and figures, rather than on experience.

16.For instance much of the newspaper and television reporting on the death of Leah Betts in 1995 ignored the fact that Betts died in her own home at her 18th birthday party, due to the consumption of drugs that had been purchased from a friend. Betts had no reported connections with dance culture, yet newspaper and television reporting blamed the "dance" or "rave" drug Ecstasy for her death (Ecstasy is not a "rave" or a "dance" drug, as we have seen it has certain properties that make it popular within contemporary dance culture, but this does not mean that its use is limited to contemporary dance culture).

17.Simon Potter, Producer of BPM, suggests that the perception of contemporary dance culture as being little more than drug culture hinders his job of attempting to portray dance culture in a positive light; "we are not helped by the sort of tabloid perception of dance music as being drug addled, when of course you can level that sort of accusation at any form of popular music. Look at the amount of cocaine going down at rock concerts. It’s something that I resent" (Potter, 1995).

18.It is noticeable that, within contemporary dance culture, non-drug users are keen to defend those dance culture members who themselves choose to take drugs. For an example of this solidarity see Headon, 1995a.

19.I deliberately dressed down whilst visiting Black Magic, and dressed in a style in keeping with that particular nightclub. As is to be expected, much of contemporary dance culture considers dress to be a defining aspect of identity. However the clientele of Black Magic eschew the more glamorous styles of dress popular at other Liverpool clubs such as Cream, and favour a more relaxed and informal style. It was this style that I emulated.

20.For a brief examination of the role of altruistic responses in ethnographies of deviance see Henslin, 1972, pp.66-7.

21.Irwin warns us that "this can go on and on until we have encompassed the whole world, so we must arbitrarily draw the line somewhere" (Irwin, 1972, p.133). Within this research the ‘line’ is drawn around the worlds of television and contemporary dance music; their production, their distribution, and their consumption.

22.I acknowledge that, perhaps, my usage of the categories ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ are problematic here, for the reasons outlined by Becker:

23.As Lull suggests "the natural breaks occurring during observational studies give the researcher time to take detailed notes about what transpired during the preceding minutes or hours" (Lull, 1990, p.177).