Youth and Street Racing

In terms of its perceived threat to society, street racing seems to have fallen somewhere between regular traffic offences and car theft. Yet it has little in common with either. So far as I am aware, street racing has not been analysed by previous writers. Thus, not surprisingly, most theories have little to offer such an analysis. The key argument made in this article is that the norms of street racers are those of the dominant culture. A desire to race stems from the symbolic power of masculinity, cars and motor sport. When this desire is blocked by an absence of legal racing venues, young men instead turn to racing on the street.