The everyday Bogans: Identity and community amongst Heavy Metal fans
Citation
Export citationSnell, D. (2012). The everyday Bogans: Identity and community amongst Heavy Metal fans (Thesis, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)). University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10289/6078
Permanent Research Commons link: https://hdl.handle.net/10289/6078
Abstract
Since the mid-twentieth century some social psychologists have demarcated communities as static entities; conceptual and physical boundaries were placed around communities to facilitate scholarly analysis. This theoretical and methodological bias is contrasted against the consideration of the dynamic flow of communities and, by association, identity formation. The application of social interactionism provides one method through which to remedy the partiality of preferred approaches to community as practised in contemporary social psychology. Opening up analysis to the consideration of processes of communing exposes the interconnection of identity and community, symbiosis that develops through social interactions across places via the creative use of music and material objects. Evidence collected through auto-ethnographic engagement with New Zealand Heavy Metal fans clarifies the complex associations that shape and maintain individual identity and community associations. Social ties are negotiated and maintained across online and offline spaces, through personal interactions and shared experiences, via object recognition, and threshold maintenance. Social psychological research needs to return to early works of psychology and symbolic interactionism to account more fully for the complex and emplaced nature of identity and community.
Date
2012Type
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University of Waikato
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