by Daniel R. Wolf; University of Toronto Press, 1991, 372 pgs

While a doctoral graduate student at the University of Alberta, Daniel Wolf wanted "to study the ‘Harley tribe.’" He intended to research an outlaw motorcycle club, from a sociological perspective, for the basis of his dissertation. After several failed attempts to gain the confidence of various local clubs (usually due to expecting too much information too soon, thus bringing suspicion upon himself), he eventually made friends with a chapter of the "Rebels."

Wolf soon became good friends with the Rebels, and eventually intended to ask them for permission to conduct a formal study — with an understanding that they would have the final say on what information would be submitted. Such was Wolf’s loyalty to the Rebels that he stated, if he’d been asked to, he would’ve destroyed all his data without hesitation. Weeks later, "Wee Albert, who took great pleasure in talking about ‘what it means to be a Rebel and a brother,’ approached me and said, ‘Being an anthropologist you study people, right? Well, have you ever thought of maybe doing a study on the club" Chances are it probably wouldn’t carry (club approval), but maybe. I’d like to see it happen.’" (p.19). After the club gave its formal approval of the project, Wolf studied them for an additional year and a half (approximately three years total). The end result is this book.

The Rebels is a truly unique book: "At its best a veteran club will operate with the internal discipline and precision of a paramilitary organization, which is completely necessary if it hopes to beat the odds and survive. These men close their world to the outside, turning to each other for help and guidance. They protect themselves with a rigid code of silence that cloaks their world in secrecy. Thus, despite the fact that outlaw motorcycle clubs are found in every major urban center in Canada and the United States — there are approximately 900 clubs — the subculture had remained ethnologically unexplored." (Pp. 9-10). Unlike the usual biased and semi-literate crap put out by investigative reporters and police detectives, this scholarly work examines the outlaw biker lifestyle from a realistic perspective, and even addresses such serious (and under-reported) issues as wrongful police harassment and illegal citizen vigilantism (which often takes the form of running a lone biker off the road, simply based upon his appearance).

Wolf has split his book into five sections:

1. Freedom and protest: the seductive world of biking

2. Becoming an outlaw: the group-socialization process

3. The dynamics of outlaw sex and gender

4. Living in an outlaw biker’s world

5. Making it all work: economic and political realities

"As a member he will be expected to ‘show class’ (display a minimum of anxiety or concern) and remain cool (unperturbed and controlled) in high-risk situations." (P.91)

"‘Playing it cool’ relates to the basic psychodynamics of portraying a positive self-image. An individual enters a barroom brawl with the same psychological sensitivities that he uses in the ‘real world.’ Just as he evaluates his own capacities in terms of the feedback he receives from others, so too will he be keenly aware of the reaction his presence causes an opponent to have in those tense moments prior to a conflict. If you show you fear him, he will feel strong. If you disdain him, he will feel uncertain. During the actual combat one must at all costs remain impervious to the efforts of the foe. If all these seemingly extraneous ploys portray you as cool, deliberate, and confident, you help your opponent fold in the clutch." (p. 204)

"The novice biker is drawn into a highly romanticized ideology in which outlaw bikers become the good guys: ‘bikers are real people with respect and compassion for our fellow man.’ What the outsider sees as the transgression of conventional norms — social and criminal deviance — the biker views as transcendence of restrictions in order to achieve personal freedom. Their prose, poetry, and editorials paint a picture of the contemporary biker on his Harley as the spiritual descendant of the frontiersman on his horse; they see themselves as North America’s last heroes of independence and self-reliance. If a biker admits to being an anachronism in contemporary society, he feels it is because he clings to his heritage of freedom while most citizens have abandoned it for the bland predictability that comes with the rigid structure of bureaucratic control. In the process of creating a positive image of himself, the biker reinforces the subcultural boundary by forming a negative stereotype of outsiders. In the outlaw-biker ethos he learns that the citizen is the bad guy, the philistine who has sold his soul to the status quo for security and who operates those regulatory agencies that destroy what they cannot control — the biker." (P.56)

"A man who enters this subculture in search of an identity looks to the outlaw-biker tradition to provide him with long-standing values, behaviors, and symbols. What he will find are heroes and role models, a personal legacy that is consistent with what hw discovered on the streets about the complete man. He will adopt attitudes and behaviors that gravitate around lower-class focal concerns with independence, freedom, self-reliance, toughness, impulsiveness, and masculinity, all of which will be embodied in a highly romanticized image of the anti-hero." (P.33)

"Regardless of whether we wish to praise outlaw bikers as heroes or condemn them as villains, we simply cannot explain the nature of their opposition in terms of the conventional stereotype of a sociopath. Despite the subcultural displays of deviance and occasional criminal behavior witnessed by the general public, many of the values inherent in conventional society are indeed espoused by the outlaw patch holders withing the framework of their ‘biker society,’ e.g., social solidarity, brotherhood, independence, masculinity, patriotism and individual freedom, corporate membership and co-liability, ideological participation and responsibility, and adherence to rules and regulations in a democratic organization. If there is indeed this much value and attitude overlap, wherein lie the social-psychological boundaries— source of value and attitude opposition— that lead to deviance and crime? The source of opposition lies in the fact that an outlaw motorcycle club is a reaction against the superego of technocracy and the Protestant ethic: the principal that one’s work is one’s life. Outlaw bikers desire to go beyond a purely rationalized sense of self and society. The core motivation for the outlaw biker is to achieve a sense of personal self that transcends the ordinary, and to live an existence that occasionally breaks the shackles that chain one to the mundane. He escapes into a highly hedonistic existence. Symbolism, rituals, the power of a Harley-Davidson, the high sensation of speed, and the eroticism of flesh are the biker’s refuge from the forces of rationalization. The world-view of the outlaw biker places an emphasis on the sensually stimulating and the erotic within the social context of community. This is certainly not a rational pursuit, it is more of a visionary quest." (P.348)