1. The title of this chapter, 'What tribe do you belong to?', is from DTE News Special Edn (Nov/Dec) 1995:2.

2. According to Turner, there are three types: spontaneous, ideological and normative communitas. An ideological communitas is a group's ideal and utopian model designed to replicate the concrete experience of spontaneous communitas. Normative communitas is an attempt to establish permanent communitas, with systematic rules and legal structures. Via further communitas experiences, groups often split and factions arise, starting the cycle over (Turner 1982b:49-50).

3. Said to be closely associated with the lowering of status, Turner eventually extended the metaphor to cover: the relationship between those undergoing ritual transition; 'religions of humility' (e.g. Franciscan, Vaisnavism); institutionalised poverty (such as that taught by Buddha, Gandhi) and other monastic and mendicant states (these states are described as 'permanent liminality' and are an attempt to bring about sustained 'normative communitas'); the middle class countercultural movements of the 1960s and '70s; the status of autochthonous people and 'submerged' kinship links (1969; 1974).

4. The Pandharpur pilgrimage, like the Muslim hajj, 'remains within an established religious system. It does not lower defenses between castes, just as Islam does not allow those beyond the Umma (the nation of Islam) to visit the holy places of Mecca and Medina' (Turner 1973:220-21).

5. Each of which, in the lingua franca of Bourdieu (1984), earn respect and 'distinction' for the achievements, style and 'cultural capital' that are the common aspirations of their milieu.

6. A Durkheim, who, as Evans (1997:222) notes, is 'interpreted through the lenses of a surrealism, which was obsessed with exoticism, representation of otherness, Shamanic rituals, masks, and sacred sites'.

7. According to Evans (1997:222), Maffesoli's interest is in all those things Bataille represented as that which was "heterogeneous" to the order of rationalistic, instrumental and capitalistic "homogeneity"'.

8. The cosmic sensuality which Bakhtin assumed characterised the 'people's second life' is somewhat manifest in 'underground centrality' or 'black market sociality' which, for Maffesoli, is sociality of the first, and ephemeral, order.

9. Though apparently totally unaware of Turner.

10. 'Eroticism', which can be physical, emotional or religious, refers to 'a heightened experience which transgresses the self, wipes away the discontinuities that separate individuals, and accomplishes a temporary fusion of selves' (Mellor and Shilling 1997:182).

11. The founder of Burning Man, Larry Harvey, is a notable TAZ/Immediatist engineer. For Harvey: modern society discourages active participation and encourages us to be passive consumers ... [W]e don't participate in culture, we consume it. We live together in isolated stalls. The context of community, the vital interplay of human beings, has been forgotten. What we consume has no inherent meaning or transcendent value to us. It is no surprise we thirst for thrills. Consumption doesn't lead to satisfaction, only more consumption. If we're to break this cycle, we must somehow reclaim community and create culture out of that experience. (cited in Wray 1995)

12. It is, likewise, a designation employed by new travellers (Hetherington 1993:152) and dance collectives.

13. The organisers of Aquarius actively promoted the concept of 'the tribe'. Not only had they urged participants to organise themselves into 'tribes' to construct their own shelters, share food and be collectively responsible for the environment, 'inter-tribal' communication was stressed (James 1973:951).

14. The original Mullumbimbi community, from which the support base for Aquarius was provided, was described as 'a white corroboree, the first meeting of the Mullumbimbi tribe' (Jiggins 1983:3, in Newton 1988:61). The Homeland Festival, held annually at The Sanctuary in the Thora Valley NSW, has also been described as 'a New Corroboree' (from Oct 1989 festival poster).

15. For one thing, incidences of sexual harassment have not been unknown at ConFest. According to Anthony, the lingering 'free sex' perspectives of the sixties are partially responsible for abuses, including the (alleged) rape of a fifteen year old girl on New Year's Eve at Birdlands (an incident achieving notoriety at a candle light vigil on the evening of January 1st). And, he adds, 'it's not just local yobbos that come in and create the problems, it's [also] New Age hippies [who] exploit each other'.

16. Participants are often habitués of alternative dance venues - disused industrial spaces such as Global Village in Footscray, outdoor dance festivals such as earthcore, and protest events like Reclaim the Streets, Earth Dance (a global benefit dance for Tibet) and Goongerah Forest festivals.

17. Part of Merleau Ponty's non-dualistic ontology, this is a term used to describe the embodied intersubjectivity characterising human being-in-the-world.

18. According to Richard and Kruger (1998:168-9): [T]his culture transforms eroticism into a dance style, sexuality is expressed in ritual form. The dance itself becomes a form of sexual intercourse where beats and rhythms imitate different stages of orgasm. The dancers experience virtual sex on the dance floor, releasing their sexual tension through ecstatic shouts.

19. Thus, stories of aggression, homophobia and sexual harassment are rare.

20. Maffesoli refutes claims that contemporary society is experiencing rampant individualism and/or undergoing an homogenised massification. Neither is the case since society is 'built on a fundamental paradox: the constant interplay between the growing massification and the development of micro-groups' (1996:6). 'All social life', he argues, is organised by a 'mass-tribe dialectic ... naturally inducing adherence and distance, attraction and repulsion' (ibid:127).

21. The slogan echoes 'Everyone's your mate in Albion Free State', an early free festival motto (McKay 1996:156), and one new traveller's incentive for a life on the road: 'It's the thought of the thousands of friends I haven't met yet' (Stone 1996:153).

22. Such experiences occasion permanent bonding. Despite the absence of strict controls, the process is not unlike that observable in such diverse phenomena as Ndembu circumcision rites and the army (Turner 1972:215-16). Referring to both boys undergoing lengthy initiation rites and army recruits, Turner points out that 'no longer were they grandsons, sons, nephews, but simply anonymous novices ... [who] looked upon each other as equals, each an integral person rather than a social persona segmentalized into a series and a set of structural roles and statuses'. Among the Ndembu, '[f]riendships made in these circumstances of liminal seclusion sometimes lasted throughout life'.

23. Lewis and Dowsey-Magog (1993:205-6) use 'outlaw' to describe the disruptive groups of drunken youths, 'with their baseball caps, baggy shorts, and American sneakers', who rampage about Maleny on New Year's eve.

24. Fatalities are associated with invasions. In recent years, two local males, both drunk, have died in separate incidents as they attempted to enter ConFest. One drowned in the Murray (at Moama II), and the other died from head injuries at Gum Lodge (Easter 1998) in a motor vehicle accident near The Gate.

25. Some, however, argue that, since 'yobs' have the most to gain from such an experience, and that there are obvious signs of behaviour modification, they are more than welcome.

26. Traditionally a permitted transgression for youth on such occasions, 'pelting' refers to the hurling of excrement, ashes and dirt in European Carnivals of the fifteenth and sixteenth century, or of flour, dirt and confetti in nineteenth century Mardi Gras (Shrum and Kilburn 1996:427).

27. For most participants, marijuana or 'dope' is regarded as a benevolent narcotic. Favourable attitudes to cannabis are reinforced by lobby groups like HEMP (Help End Marijuana Prohibition) who promote cannabis as a valuable, flexible, renewable resource.

28. According to the victim of this witch hunt, DTE should not forget that ConFest has some foundation in 'Psychedelic Consciousness'. After all, 'the Hippy movement & the endless Summers of Love entered western culture on a wave of psychedelia' (Svendsen ICBM1999:46). Furthermore, 'tripping workshops', he maintains, are 'happening informally all over ConFest, all the time, as friends come together to chat, & share a joint or whatever'. And, these 'workshops' are just one of the 'many languages of sharing at ConFest, the hug, the massage, the joint, the rollie, depending & according to people's lights'. His 'Spiritual Psychedelics" workshops were designed as dignified, 'consciously experimental', safe spaces to explore psychedelics (ibid:45).

29. Much like the way Rainbow Gatherings have seemingly converted 'A camp' drunks and locals (Niman 1997:183).

30. A huge shopping plaza in Melbourne.

31. There was a 'kombi circle' on site at Birdlands consisting of at least three multi-hued kombi vans and a tipi which encircled a fire/drumming space. The kombi provides the exception to the rule since, quite simply, it objectifies 'the sixties'. A hippy icon, it triggers 'peace' and 'love'.

32. Some criticisms, especially wholesale denunciations, are rather unfair, as the stage locations - formally the Music village, then the Earth Sharing stage, then the Solar Stage - have accommodated impromptu amateur ensembles of varying description.

33. The scepticism expressed by members of the ConFest Committee toward the value of staged performance parallels, somewhat, the struggle waged by the Olympic movement (especially Coubertin) against the encroaching 'spectacle'. MacAloon (1984) discusses how, at the Olympics, 'the aggrandising ethos of the spectacle attacks the unities ordered by the festival frame, and the licensing of passive spectatorship contravenes the ritual command that all be engaged' (ibid:263). The spectacle is cheap, banal, a mere display trespassing upon the sacred 'transcendental ground' of the 'cult' of Olympism. Yet spectacle, an unforeseen recruiting ground for the intensive generation of 'ultimate concerns', is a triumphant cultural performance deserving further research, particularly as a component of 'neo-liminal' (ibid:269) performances from the Olympic Games to ConFest.

34. The collaboration took place as a result of music budget limitations enforced by a small band of DTE techno opponents. Richard drew attention to this process contending that a form of 'generationalism' such as that described in Mark Davis' Ganglands (1997), characterises the way 'a particular class of volunteers, who call themselves "the workers", operate to actively squeeze out the possibility of the Trance Dance workshops' by limiting the village component of the ConFest budget such that funding the Music Stage or Trance Dance becomes unfeasible (Richard, DTE email-group 13/8/98).

35. Curiously, as it is subject to external imposition, Trance Dance becomes a 'ritual of resistance'. This parallels circumstances in Britain wherein state imposition politicised dance parties (Rietveld 1998:255) including the Blackburn warehouse parties of the early nineties which, under sustained police pressure, mutated from 'entertainment' to 'movement' (Hemment 1998:218). Historical precedents are easy to locate. As Stallybrass and White convey (1986:16), since the Renaissance: carnivals, fairs, popular games and festivals were very swiftly 'politicized' by the very attempt made on the part of local authorities to eliminate them. The dialectic of antagonism frequently turned rituals into resistance at the moment of intervention by the higher powers, even when no overt oppositional element had been present before.

36. An objection paralleling that of rock patrons and aficionados who venerate 'live' musical 'happenings', expressing their contempt for 'disc cultures' (Thornton 1995:8).

37. The Laceweb village (from Gum Lodge I), with its 'celebration of play' workshop space, explicitly accommodates drumming, didj and dance along with 'community healing action' (promotion).

38. Indeed, DTE's 'attention' to techno can be compared to the moral outrage which fuelled the Tory government's commitment to draconian legislation (the CJA) criminalising free raves (and new travellers) in rural Britain. The condensed topography (of Britain and ConFest), and the concomitant increase in the likelihood of spatial transgression, are similar factors in both cases.

39. Hybrid incorporates 'all technology without bias (from fire to wood to wire and electronics)' (from proposal).