From Festies to Tourrats: Examining the Relationship between Jamband Subculture Involvement and Role Meanings

Abstract

I introduce two continuous measures of subculture involvement (ideological embeddedness and behavioral-relational involvement), and use them to examine the relationship between involvement in the jamband subculture and the affective meanings (evaluation, potency, and activity) associated with 18 roles that are relevant to that subculture. I expect the two measures of involvement to be related positively to the evaluation and potency of fourteen subculture roles (deadhead, drinker, drug user, environmentalist, festie, hippie, phishhead, rainbow person, rastafarian, raver, stoner, tourrat, vendor, wharfrat), and negatively to the evaluation and potency of four authority roles (capitalist, nark, police officer, venue security officer). Using data from self-administered surveys (N = 418 for familiar subculture and authority roles, N = 219 for less familiar subculture roles), I find that subculture members learn meanings for relevant roles as a result of their socialization in the subculture; more specifically, as a result of their levels of ideological embeddedness and behavioral-relational involvement. This study enhances other investigations of subculture and meaning socialization. First, whereas past studies have examined between-group meaning variation, I investigate within-group meaning variation. A within-group analysis should indicate whether or not groups are heterogeneous, a finding that might reduce negative acts such as stereotyping. Second, I introduce two continuous measures designed to capture two dimensions of subculture involvement: ideological embeddedness and behavioral-relational involvement. Similar to previous conceptualizations of involvement, these two measures represent both attitudinal and behavioral involvement. Third, previous qualitative research within the related Grateful Dead subculture suggests that although not all subculture roles are equal in terms of evaluation, most subculture roles tend to be equal in potency. I further investigate this hypothesis using evaluation and potency to represent the affective meaning of roles, and I examine the implications of these findings for the jamband subculture.