“Bike Messengers and the Really Real: Effervescence, Reflexivity, and Postmodern Identity”

摘要

Out of more than two thousand bike messengers in New York City, a fewhundred participate in alleycats—illegal races held in open traffic. Surroundingthis racing scene is a vibrant messenger community. Messengers who race in or attend alleycats carry their messenger identity into all aspects of their lives. Through direct participant observation, this articleproposes that alleycats function as Durkheimian rituals for these messengers.Alleycats express the central values of the social world. Lost in collectiveeffervescence, the individual confronts these values as objectifiedtruths, which allow messengers to form stable identities. Further, bicycles,messenger bags, and other objects become sacred symbols within this ritualizationprocess. The ability of messengers to construct such nonreflexiveidentities is juxtaposed with theories about the self in postmodernity.