Abstract
The Scene of Scenes: Berlin Underground Parties, Neither Movement nor Institution
One of the most characteristic features of Berlin nightlife consists of parties that are often inaccessible to the wide public. As a consequence, within the Berlin underground, knowing where a party takes place is often a sufficient condition for gaining status. Drawing from Street’s (1995) concept of the ‘rhetoric of the local’, the chapter investigates how status among club-goers is less dependent on cultural capital (Thornton 1995) than on social capital. The chapter attempts a typology of club-goers based on their social capital. It then illustrates the various interests at stake within this sector of the entertainment business, relating these interests to their symbolic counterpart in the form of an emergent ideology of the scene.