Since the late 1980s, rave culture has often been framed as a youth subculture, yet its educational dimensions remain underexplored. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship from education, developmental psychology, and cultural studies, this paper presents an integrative literature review (Torraco, 2005) that reconceptualizes rave culture through the lens of play-based learning and social imagination (Greene, 1995).

Informed by foundational theories of play (Piaget, 1945; Vygotsky, 1978), the review examines English-language sources published from the late 1980s to the present, encompassing the emergence, transformation, and post-pandemic resurgence of rave culture. Sources include peer-reviewed scholarship and academic books, supplemented by publicly available materials such as published interviews, oral histories, documentary films, and curated digital archives that document the experiences of DJs, promoters, and ravers.

Inclusion criteria required substantive analytic engagement with first-person narratives and lived experience within rave culture; sources that were primarily promotional, commercial, or descriptively superficial were excluded. Through iterative thematic coding, the review synthesizes and reinterprets educational themes related to play, imagination, and collective meaning-making across successive eras of ravers. By positioning the rave as a site of informal learning, this paper expands educational theories of play and lays conceptual groundwork for future research on youth cultural practices beyond school.

Authors:
Brian Mooney, Fairleigh Dickinson University, United States

About the Presenter(s)
Dr. Brian Mooney is a teacher-educator, scholar, and author from the United States. He is an Assistant Professor of Education at Fairleigh Dickinson University. His research explores the intersections of language, literacy, and culture.

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