Abstract:

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.

Author: Kimberly Rae Connor