| Club drugs emerged as significant drugs of abuse during the course of the 1990's and became a key risk issue in America, particularly as they concerned youth. Under the conditions of post-industrial society, the experience of risk among youth has many social influences. The risk habitus of club drug using suburban youth has been socially structured in ways that lead them to conceive of risk in complex ways. These youth have a keen sense of risk and act in ways that often account for and enact risk in the form of "edgework"---intentional risk taking. At the subcultural level, norms of comportment and competency stimulate youth to cultivate knowledge about the drugs they use as well as their related risks. The accumulation of subcultural capital, and status within peer networks, ultimately depends upon such knowledge. This information diffusion has been structured by globalization and the entrenchment of the informational age. The broadening of subcultural communities through the revolutionary reconfiguration of social networks in the virtual realm has transformed not only the ways in which drug trends diffuse, but how youth understand their related risks as well. At a more fundamental level, the relative privilege that suburban, middle-class youth enjoy has positioned them for reflexive and critical inquiries of risk in their lives. The cultural capital gleaned from their preparation for the post-industrial economy has positioned them to utilize resources to effect positive health outcomes. More broadly, the coincidence of their lives with structural forces such as the rise of neo-liberalism and the self-help movement, as well as shifting patterns of youth consumption, has ingrained a sense of educated consumerism, which they appropriate for underground purposes. The combination of these factors, along with generational events and features of individual biography, have colluded to form the ways these youth think about risk and act upon it in their play of the serious games of life. In this manner, a range of social forces shape not only how they conceive of risk but their practice of risk management through a range of strategies aimed at minimizing the harms associated with their risk taking. |
