The Fifth Corner
Hip Hop's New Geometry of Adolescent Religiousity
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/imre2006.v9i1.7Keywords:
hip hop, sacred space, religious behaviour, adolescent boysAbstract
This ethnography explores the ways in which hip hop culture functions as a secular form of religiosity for adolescent males in the United States. The data is based on the author’s experience as an instructor at a private high school where she observed the behaviour here described. ‘The Fifth Corner’—a site created by eight teenage boys for enacting hip hop principles—displayed elements of religious life that historians of religion conventionally ascribe to religious behaviour. It was a designated sacred space carved out of a secular realm that provided what the secular environment did not: the opportunity for a community of believers to congregate, to compose scripture, and to generate symbolic and ritual activity that elicited a spiritual feeling which promoted an ethical posture and led to the development of a doctrine of faith.
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