Article

Parkour, Masculinity, and the City

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Abstract

Parkour is a new, and increasingly popular, sport in which individuals athletically and artistically negotiate obstacles found in the urban environment. In this article, I position parkour as a performance of masculinity involving spatial appropriation. Through ethnographic data I show how young men involved in the sport use the city (both the built environment and the people within it) as a structural resource for the construction and maintenance of gender identities. The focus of my research highlights the performance of gender as a spatialized process.

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... Sociology of sport has a long-standing tradition of examining gender (e.g., Cahn, 2015;Hargreaves, 1990), but geographical and spatial analyses are a more recent addition (Kidder, 2013;van Ingen, 2003). Much of the literature examining space and sport has focused on exploring the relationship between informal or lifestyle sports and the ways gender is mediated through the landscapes of these settings (Waitt, 2008;Wheaton, 2000). ...
... Much of the literature examining space and sport has focused on exploring the relationship between informal or lifestyle sports and the ways gender is mediated through the landscapes of these settings (Waitt, 2008;Wheaton, 2000). In particular, these studies have highlighted that, although these sports are considered alternative to traditional sporting spaces, dominant gender ideologies tend to be perpetuated within them, which result in the marginalization of women (Comley, 2016;Kidder, 2013;Olive et al., 2015). Spatial analyses have further considered how gyms and fitness spaces can perpetuate restrictive forms of masculinity and femininity, making them either inaccessible or intimidating for individuals who do not conform to these ideals (Carlsson, 2017;Kerry, 2017). ...
... Finally, it had floodlights that lit the entire playing space and surrounds. In giving men exclusive use of this oval, the club allowed them to control the best playing space (Kidder, 2013), positioning them as privileged inhabitants (Stoddart, 2011). Even when the senior men's teams were not using the pitch, the juniors, women, and All Abilities teams were unable to gain access, a decision justified as necessary to preserve the quality of the playing surface. ...
Article
This study employs a spatial analysis to critically examine gender relations within an Australian football and netball community sports club that has sought to address gender inequity and promote the participation of women across the club. Notable changes included increased female representation in the club’s decision-making structures, growing numbers of female members, and the establishment of a women’s and girls’ football section. Using an in-depth case study that combined interviews and observations over a 6-month period, we investigated the impact these changes have had on transforming gender relations and in challenging perceptions of the club as a privileged space for its male members. The study utilized spatial and feminist theory to illustrate that, despite the club’s efforts to change gender relations, men who are able to embody dominant forms of masculinity (i.e., high ability and able-bodied) continue to be privileged within the club environment. The article highlights the importance of spatial analysis in illuminating the ways in which various micro-level practices preserve dominant gender relations within community sports. The findings reinforce that although a greater number of women and girls are participating in community sport, this alone is not significantly reshaping gender relations. Policies seeking to promote gender equity in sport need to enforce changes in club environments in addition to focusing on increasing women’s participation.
... The absence of (older) adults means therefore action sports are often depicted as sites where adolescents, especially males, are free to develop an autonomous and carefree identity and determine their level of competence individually and within the peer group. For example, Kidder (2013) found that the young men participating in his study used parkour as a structural resource for the construction and maintenance of gender identities. Specifically, they spatialized gender and appropriated their 'surroundings with performances of masculinity' (2). ...
... This means they have to endure pain while trying risky manoeuvres. These practices reflect Kidder's (2013) argument that action sports participants (re)produce masculine sporting identities by participating in a male dominated sport in which they have to endure pain and embrace risk to practice and excel at the chosen skills. The boys also get to the point where they perform risky manoeuvres, by 'pushing' themselves and the sport to a higher level: ...
... This status reflects their masculine presentations of their self to others. This example illustrates how their feelings of 'freedom' are limited by the social constraints of (kite surf) peers (Kidder 2013). ...
Article
While coaches and organizational structures play a pivotal role in the disciplining of young athletes in traditional mainstream organized sports, young kite surfers seem to be free to develop their own skills and create their own identity and subcultures. However, the feeling of freedom of young commercially sponsored kite surfers may be more complex than the popular discourses within action sport cultures suggest. I use a Foucauldian framework to explore how disciplinary power, embedded in time and space, produces athletic skill and identity in adolescent kite surfers and informs their practices of freedom. In this paper, I show how young kite surfers negotiate constraints of space and time that are shaped by relationships with their parents, their kite surfing peers and their commercial sponsors. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eleven commercially sponsored male kite surfers, between 11 and 17 years old. In so doing, I found that although the discourse of freedom associated with kite surfing acts on their experiences, these young athletes were also subjected to disciplinary power produced by temporal and spatial limitations and capabilities, their subculture, digital media and commercialization.
... Literature on parkour focused mainly on the liberating relationship and opportunities parkour it affords practitioners within contemporary urban spaces (Bavinton, 2007(Bavinton, , 2011Atkinson, 2009;Daskalaki et al., 2008;Guss, 2011;Marshall, 2010;Mould, 2009;Saville, 2008;Lamb 2014aLamb , 2014bBenasso, 2015). However, rare but meaningful literature addressed parkour as a highly commodified global popular physical practice that attracts, and is managed, predominantly by young men (Stapleton & Terrio, 2009;Thorpe & Ahmad, 2013;Kidder, 2013). Kidder's (2013) ethnographic study with traceurs in Chicago, underlined how traceurs co-constructed 2 In Turin's parkour communities the creation of "Parkour Torino" as a crew is associated with the origins of the practice in the city around 2005. ...
... However, rare but meaningful literature addressed parkour as a highly commodified global popular physical practice that attracts, and is managed, predominantly by young men (Stapleton & Terrio, 2009;Thorpe & Ahmad, 2013;Kidder, 2013). Kidder's (2013) ethnographic study with traceurs in Chicago, underlined how traceurs co-constructed 2 In Turin's parkour communities the creation of "Parkour Torino" as a crew is associated with the origins of the practice in the city around 2005. Later on, the group created a registered no-profit organization. ...
... 6), and addressed the (unintentional and unfortunate) exclusionary result of traceurs' performance of masculinity. Kidder's (2013) analysis partially resonated with my fieldwork experience in Turin. During the research, I rarely encountered young women who were regular practitioners of parkour in public spaces. ...
... That's why so few people who participate in team sports can take a chance (Jacobson, 2002) [13] . Before the turn of the twenty-first century, LGBTQ+ identities were rarely visible in sports and frequently had a negative impact on professional athletes' careers, as demonstrated by the experiences of Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova, and Greg Louganis (Kidder, 2013) [15] . Following their public disclosure of their sexual orientation, King and Navratilova encountered criticism from organisations and sponsors in addition to their fan base. ...
... That's why so few people who participate in team sports can take a chance (Jacobson, 2002) [13] . Before the turn of the twenty-first century, LGBTQ+ identities were rarely visible in sports and frequently had a negative impact on professional athletes' careers, as demonstrated by the experiences of Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova, and Greg Louganis (Kidder, 2013) [15] . Following their public disclosure of their sexual orientation, King and Navratilova encountered criticism from organisations and sponsors in addition to their fan base. ...
... Adventure sport coaches must be able to use these risks as learning tools in the development of their athletes, in spite of the potential for harm (L. Collins & Collins, 2012, 2013. It is up to adventure sport coaches to mediate their athletes' engagement with risk, as a certain degree of risk can be beneficial in helping adventure sport athletes to learn and develop their skills. ...
... Besides being an unregulated sport, parkour is also an adventure sport (Kidder, 2013). All of the participants in this study had prior experience as parkour athletes before becoming parkour coaches, a trend that is common across adventure sports coaches (Lorimer & Holland-Smith, 2012). ...
Article
Parkour is a relatively new sport, and so there has not yet been much published research relating to parkour, or more specifically, parkour coaching. There is a large body of knowledge relating to how sport coaches learn to coach, but such research has examined regulated sports; that is, sports with national governing bodies. In North America, where this study was conducted, parkour does not have any national governing bodies, rendering it unregulated. When asked how they learned to coach, parkour coaches from this study described the influences of various sources of learning: parkour coaching experience, previous leadership experience, experience as an athlete in parkour and other sports, other parkour coaches, non-parkour coaches, parkour coach education programmes, school, reflection, and the Internet. It will be interesting to see how the specific influences of these sources might change in the future if parkour in North America becomes regulated.
... More importantly, it involves the deliberate use of urban environments and areas not originally designed for sport or leisure activities. Kidder (2013) states that parkour is a new and increasingly popular sport in which individuals athletically and artistically negotiate obstacles found in the urban environment (Kidder, 2013:1). Underpinning this is a philosophy of altruism and useful strength, longevity, selfimprovement, and self-understanding (Parkourpedia, 2017). ...
... As these elements would have occupied much space and left little room for other functions, parkour was suggested by some of the young people. Jeffrey Kidder (Kidder, 2013) has studied parkour and those who practice the sport. He writes that parkour can resemble skating, only without the skateboard. ...
Article
The article is based on the designing of a parkour site at Leitet, in the borough Laksevåg, in Bergen, Norway. It explains the different stages of participation and the process of developing the Leitet parkour site. The Municipality of Bergen plays a significant role in involving children and young people in area development. Dialogue and collaboration with residents and other actors in the area are identified as essential approaches. Laksevåg was given priority on the basis of several years of mapping and statistical research, confirming the importance of a comprehensive and coherent area development, both social and physical. The area is distinguished, negatively, from Bergen as a whole by several variables. The article also emphasizes the connection between living conditions and good social networks, active involvement, and participation in society. © Oxford University Press and Community Development Journal 2018. All rights reserved.
... Alternative sports have been perceived as providing challenges to traditional ways of doing sports, but research has documented that many of these alternative sports remain the playground of affluent western white men Kidder, 2013;Kusz, 2004;Sisjord, 2005Sisjord, , 2015Wheaton, 2013Wheaton, , 2015. For instance, Kusz (2004) argues that the media's representation of extreme sport in North America is a cultural construction of white masculinity, while draws attention to how the presentation of skateboarders can be interpreted as a symbolic escape from middle-class whiteness, through their references to street culture and the "ghetto." ...
... For instance, young ethnic Norwegian males from higher social strata are overrepresented in traditional organized sports Kavli, 2007;Øia & Vestel, 2007) and young people from lower socioeconomic strata, ethnic minorities and females are underrepresented (Myrli & Mehus, 2015;Seippel et al., 2016;Seippel, Sletten, & Strandbu, 2011). Even though alternative sports have been perceived as a challenge to traditional organized sports, research has documented that many of these remain the playgrounds of affluent western white men Kidder, 2013;Kusz, 2004;Sisjord, 2005Sisjord, , 2015Wheaton, 2013Wheaton, , 2015. In comparison, and UNG&FRI (2009) document that young people on the outside of organized leisure activities are often frequent users of more unorganized activities related to "Youth Clubs" and youth subcultures. ...
Thesis
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In a rapidly changing world characterized by increased ethnic diversity, successful integration depends (among other factors) on social interaction among people. Hence, there is a need for cross-cultural meeting points. Breaking [breakdance] is historically linked to a black, urban street context and has evolved into a global phenomenon with adherents throughout the world. This dissertation investigates the meaning of breaking in the lives of young people living in Oslo, Norway. Considering breaking as a subculture and alternative sport, the dissertation may contribute to the understanding of young people’s choices – their construction of meaning, identity and gender within this activity. Theoretically, the study draws on symbolic interactionism to understand how young breakers in Oslo define their experiences and give meaning to their identities, behaviors, realities and social interactions. However, to address social structure and power, gender perspective has been applied. As a social construction, gender is constantly reconstructed through social interaction, and the dissertation explores how gender influences the breakers’ experiences and how breaking is a site for negotiating gender ideology and power relations. Methodologically, the study uses a qualitative research strategy to create an in-depth understanding of the social practices of breaking. Empirically, the dissertation draws on ethnographic data generated through fieldwork and interviews. The fieldwork involved participant observation four days a week from August 2011 to March 2012. The fieldwork was followed by 17 qualitative interviews with 6 female and 11 male breakers, who reflected the observed diversity within the subculture of breaking.
... The style of clothes and body language depicted in the film can be said to reinforce an aggressive style enacted through vandalization or wear and tear on public spaces and objects, by skateboarding on them. It also implies that skateboarding is not only a performative masculine enactment, but also an appropriation, making the public space a masculine space (Kidder 2013). However, Wilhelm talks about a new style in skateboarding, which involves wearing slim trousers and maybe even a suit jacket over a tank top. ...
... Skateboarding is sometimes idealized as a socially inclusive street culture, but in my fieldwork girls were completely absent and ethnic minorities did not play a significant role. These findings concur with the results of recent research on alternative sports and gender (Atencio and Beal 2011;Atencio et al. 2009;Bäckström 2005Bäckström , 2013Dupont 2014;Kidder 2013;Wheaton 2007). The cool and outsider lifestyle in school often involves thinking strategically in packs (Kenway et al. 2006). ...
Article
Full-text available
This article analyses the construction of skateboard masculinity as a performative visual culture, related to the conditions for masculine subject positions in upper secondary school visual art and media education. The empirical material comes from visual ethnographic research in classroom and discourse analysis of one pupil’s skateboarding video and an interview with the same pupil. The results show that the masculinity performed in both the visual art classroom and in pupil’s skate video is complex and moves between homosocial expressions and intimacy, risk-taking and visual culture enacted as being cool and an outsider. The analysis implies a linkage to a neo-liberal ideal in which the values of play and pleasure as a crucial aspect of counterculture are connected to entrepreneurial individualism, consumer creativity and market trends.
... The first use of reflexivity to act as a recognition of self was predominantly identified in the SSJ literature from those working as cultural "insiders" within research communities. Many acknowledged this status as an explanation for how they gained access to their communities (Atkinson, 2007;Caudwell., 2003;Crocket, 2015;Lang, 2015;May, 2009), built rapport and trust with the participants (Kidder, 2013;McDonald, 2009;McNarry et al., 2020;Pike & Maguire, 2003;Wedgwood, 2004), and glean more meaningful data (Bridel & Rail, 2007;Norman, 2010). This reflexive strategy was also represented as an act of witnessing or "being there" to form more authentic or meaningful understandings of the communities in which they were situated, which reflects a form of reflexivity as a methodological tool that ostensibly leads to a more accurate or meaningful representation of participants (Carlson, 2010;McGrath & Chananie-Hill, 2009;Robidoux, 2004;Wesely, 2001;Wood & Garn, 2016). ...
Article
In this special issue, which calls for a “more radical sociology of sport and physical culture,” the purpose of this paper is to address how practices of reflexivity might be mobilized among critical sport scholars toward changing the intersectional, fragmented, and complex communities we inhabit inside and outside the academy. We begin by conducting a literature review of researcher reflexivity and positionality in Sociology of Sport Journal from 2000 to 2022. Utilizing Wanda Pillow’s “reflexivities of discomfort,” we interrogate our own research by engaging in a reflexive dialogue as “critical friends.” Through this work, we try to make sense of the potential of these dialogues for shaping our ethical, political, and personal approaches to research, writing, methodology, and knowledge production.
... Why are most of them dominated by men and just a few by women? Several researchers have suggested that the use of public spaces might be one of the primary reasons for parkour to be dominated by men (Angel, 2011;Kidder, 2013;Wheaton, 2016). As Wheaton has argued, women more often than men experience the urban environment as intimidating or even unsafe (Wheaton, 2016). ...
... However, the most frequent identified outcomes are the combination of social and behavioral outcomes (37 articles). One of the most identified outcomes was building of community, social participation, and identity construction, such as studies that showed lifestyle sports enhance the construction of gender identity-both masculinity and femininity-in skateboarding, snowboarding, and parkour (Atencio et al. 2013;Dupont 2014;Kelly et al. 2005;Kidder 2013;Thorpe 2010), which also affect social hierarchy. These mechanisms were shown in Dupont's (2014) study on core and consumer skateboarders and in Sisjord's (2009) study on various identities of female snowboarders. ...
Article
Full-text available
The aim of this study is to review the literature on lifestyle sports and lifestyle sport contexts with regard to the developmental potential they may represent in young people’s everyday lives. The review applies a relational developmental systems approach to youth development. The eligibility criteria are based on the phenomenon of interest and outcomes. Hence, we include studies examining the associations between young people performing lifestyle sports and potential developmental outcomes: mental, biological, social, and behavioral. The present study shows that the volume of research on informal lifestyle sport is rather extensive and that studies on the way these activity contexts may affect developmental processes in youth are diverse and wide ranging. The studies suggest that performing lifestyle sports may have several beneficial health and skills outcomes. Furthermore, positive associations are suggested between involvement in lifestyle sport contexts such as climbing, snowboarding, parkour, tricking, kiting, and surfing and (a) mental outcomes such joy, happiness, freedom, euphoria, motivation, self-efficacy, and well-being; (b) social outcomes such as gender equality, network building, social inclusion, interaction, friendship; and (c) behavioral outcomes such as identity, creativity, and expressions of masculinity and/or femininity. The review performed indicates that lifestyle sport contexts are flexible according to needs and desires that exist among the practitioners and that the human and democratic origins of these contexts make them supportive for positive movement experiences and for positive youth development. The findings have implications for PE teachers, social workers, policymakers, sport organizations, and urban architecture, in that providing lifestyle sport opportunities in the everyday lives of young people will foster a holistic development in a positive way.
... Using the classification from previous research, we categorized each sport in which CMPCs specialized as masculine, feminine, or gender-neutral (see Table 2). Specifically, we classified the sport specialization according to Sobal and Miligrim (2019) who studied the gender-typing of sports in the U.S. For sports that did not appear in Sobal and Miligrim (2019), we categorized them based on other studies focused on gender issues in a particular sport (Carr, 2017;Kidder, 2013;Knapp, 2015;Weninger & Dallaire, 2019): (a) parkour, rodeo, skateboarding, and Xtreme sports as masculine; (b) ice dancing and speed skating as feminine; ...
Article
Full-text available
Qualitative research has demonstrated the prevalence of gender inequity and sexism in sport-related careers, including those in sport psychology. To provide quantitative evidence, we examined the role of gender in Certified Mental Performance Consultants’ (CMPC) specialization and employment by extracting and coding the data ( N = 576) from the CMPC Directory. Independent samples t tests showed that male CMPCs specialized in more masculine sports, less feminine sports, and a similar number of gender-neutral sports compared with female CMPCs. Chi-square tests of independence revealed a larger proportion of male than female CMPCs working in professional sport. No significant differences were found in other employment settings (college sport, military, and private practice), age-group specialization, and mental health licensure. These findings, which should be interpreted with caution before further investigation, suggest a need for collaboration between sport psychology professionals and sport organizations that might help mitigate internal and external barriers to gender equity.
... The use of urban public space might be one of the primary reasons for parkour to be dominated by men (Angel 2011, Kidder 2013, Wheaton 2016. The self-organised practitioners of parkour, as well as the professional parkour teams, were from the beginning very critical of DGI drawing parallels between parkour and gymnastic and thereby cutting off the specific physical and cultural context and the meaning attached to this. ...
Article
Many lifestyle sports are undergoing a process of institutionalisation and sportisation. A growing body of research in the institutionalisation of lifestyle sport is developing. This is especially the case for parkour where researchers have begun analysing how parkour has been developed in different national contexts. By drawing on institutional theory and various empirical data collected through ethnographical field studies, this article offers a qualitative analysis about how the national, socio-cultural context and the sport governance system have coloured the institutionalisation of parkour in Denmark. The institutionalisation has been driven by the practitioners’ interest in getting access to sport facilities and therefore a need to accommodate the sport governance system. But also, at the same time, by the existing associations who are facing challenges to attract young people and therefore integrating parkour into their schedules. Even though the institutionalisation creates tensions, it also illuminates how parkour has been integrated into the existing gymnastic organisations without being turned into an achievement sport, but as a sport-for-all.
... According to Gibout and Lebreton [14], parkour tends to attract participants from a lower social class than other urban sports, where participants usually come from middle or upper intellectual classes. However, Kidder [34] found that while traceurs were socially and ethnically mixed, there was a majority of white middleclass men in their late teens to early 20s. Prévitali et al. [17] also found that traceurs seemed to come from "wealthy" social classes. ...
Article
Full-text available
Parkour is a growing sport that mostly involves jumping, vaulting over obstacles, and climbing in a non-dedicated setting. The authors gathered all known relevant literature across miscellaneous academic fields in order to define parkour with regard to other sports disciplines. Parkour is a lifestyle sport, and as such provides an alternative to mainstream sports, away from strict rules, standardized settings, and necessary competitions. Traceurs (parkour adepts) consider the city as a playground and as an outlet for their creativity, but they also have a strong taste for hard and individualized challenges. They usually train on non-specific structures, at ground level. Although their social background is not clear, they are mostly young and male. Traceurs are stronger than recreational athletes, especially in eccentric exercises. However, their endurance skills may be below average. One of the core specificities of parkour is its precision constraint at landing, which turns a standing long jump into a precision jump, regulated in flight so as to prepare for landing. The running precision jump follows the same landing pattern, and its flight phase contrasts with long jump techniques. Injuries, which are not more frequent than in other sports, often occur at landing and to lower limb extremities. This risk is mitigated by targeting the landing area with the forefoot instead of letting the heel hit the ground like in gymnastics, or with rolling in order to dissipate the impact. Overall, parkour focuses on adaptability to new environments, which leads to specific techniques that have not yet been extensively addressed by the literature.
... (Darcy,14,surfer) Darcy mentions that she feels self-conscious when men 'show off' in the water. As Kidder (2013) discusses in relation to parkour, 'showing off' is a primary way to confirm masculinity and one's mastery of the natural environment. This is despite the fact that Darcy herself is 'out the back' -the place where skilled surfers wait for waves (see Roy, 2014). ...
Article
In 2021, surfing and skateboarding are scheduled to join mountain-biking as Olympic sports for the first time, a classification that comes with requirements related to sex/gender equity. Yet, these sports, and action sports generally, continue to be male dominated as questions of performance and risk are framed around boys, men, and masculinities. This qualitative study explored the facilitators of 27 Australian girls’ participation in surfing, mountain biking and skateboarding. This article focuses on the value of paternal co-participation, which was notable in interviews with girls who surf or mountain bike. In particular, we examine the complexity of the role and influence of fathers in girls’ participation. Reflecting their position in action sports, men often shape how girls access these sports and develop their skills. This points to the importance of men and fathers in facilitating girls’ participation in action sports, and possibly broader physical activity behaviours. However, we argue that merely facilitating their daughters’ participation without addressing the experiences of women without male ‘patrons’ in action sports reinscribes male dominance rather than improving gender equity. This study contributes to established work that aims to inform policies and strategies to encourage greater participation of girls and women in action sports.
... Da fällt einem manchmal gar nix mehr ein, weil die das voll belächeln.« (Unterrainer, 2010, S. 72) In ähnlicher Weise beschreibt Kidder (2013) Parkour als eine Bewegungspraxis, in der der städtische Raum transformiert und als Feld für risikoreiche Bewegungsformen genutzt wird, in dem junge Männer ihre Maskulinität durch spezifische raumerobernde Bewegungspraxen öffentlich und gegenseitig demonstrieren können und so ihre männlichkeitsfokussierte Identität formen. »The city is a structural ressource used within the performance of gender. ...
Book
Bewegung, Spiel und Sport eröffnen Kindern und Jugendlichen vielfältige Potenziale für bedeutsame Bildungs- und Erfahrungsprozesse: Sie lernen ihren eigenen Körper kennen und nutzen, sie lernen sich mit anderen zu verständigen und etwas gemeinsam zu machen, sie verbessern ihre motorischen Fähigkeiten und trauen sich mehr zu. Allerdings sind sie dabei auf geeignete Bedingungen angewiesen. Die Beiträge des Bandes behandeln die Grundlagen und konkrete Maßnahmen der »Eroberung urbaner Bewegungsräume« mit Kindern und Jugendlichen und zeigen: Insbesondere in urbanen Kontexten müssen Bewegungsräume nicht nur vorhanden sein, sondern von den Kindern und Jugendlichen auch angeeignet und genutzt werden.
... En esta línea se encuentran los estudios sobre la homosocialidad masculina alrededor del skate, como el trabajo de Carolyne Ali Khan (2009) por el cual el skate forma parte de toda una relación de la masculinidad con la materialidad del cuerpo, la representación de género, la virtuosidad técnica. También se encuentran aquí estudios sobre el Parkour como prácticas masculinizadas y profundamente ligadas a la performance de género masculina por la cual la resistencia, la virtuosidad corporal y la capacidad de apropiarse de los espacios a voluntad son claves fundamentales de un perfil de hombre joven-adulto que busca la reafirmación corporal y psicológica a partir del rendimiento físico (Kidder, 2013a;2013b). ...
Article
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En las últimas décadas, el espacio urbano ha sido recuperado por la literatura feminista para poder visibilizar una serie de retos y problemas ligados a la experiencia de la mujer. Si bien los estudios de las masculinidades abordan las prácticas de género y estudian las formas en las que las relaciones de dominio se producen en un contexto de cambio cultural y crisis de los relatos sobre la masculinidad, aún falta una teorización adecuada acerca de la manera en que esas dimensiones de género se localizan espacialmente. Se propone en este artículo un objetivo doble: aportar los elementos teóricos para poder entender la forma en la que género y espacio se entrecruzan y, en segundo lugar, hacer un repaso por las principales líneas de investigación sobre espacios y masculinidad para abrir un debate ausente en el territorio estatal. --- In recent decades, the urban space has been recovered by feminist literature to make visible a series of challenges and problems linked to the experience of women. While studies of masculinities address gender practices and study the ways in which dominance relationships occur in a context of cultural change and crisis of discourses about masculinity, there is still a lack of adequate theorizing about the way in which these gender dimensions are spatially localized. This article proposes a double objective: to provide the theoretical elements to understand the way in which gender and space intersect and, secondly, to review the main lines of research on spaces and masculinity to open an absent debate in the state territory.
... within increasingly divided urban centers throughout North America (Allain, 2008;Atencio & Wright, 2008;Atkinson, 2011;Beissel et al., 2013;Budd, 1997;Burstyn, 1999;Kidder, 2013;Wacquant, 2004;Woodward, 2007). Although neoliberalism has enriched the wealth and power of a small and mobile corporate class of affluent, White men, the lives of other working-and lower middle-class men, women, and youth have become increasingly precarious in urban centers across the world. ...
Article
This urban ethnography explores how a group of low-income (often homeless) men performed a range of masculinities through a sport-for-development program in the Western Canadian city of Edmonton, Alberta. For more than two decades, weekly floor hockey games have been organized by local health workers as part of a broader sport-based intervention/corrective aimed, in part, at reforming Edmonton’s urban “underclass,” one that is decidedly Indigenous. Drawing upon three years of ethnographic fieldwork, our intersectional analysis examines both the adaptive qualities of various classed and racialized masculinities and demonstrates the “symbolic violence” associated with their performance in the distinctive settler–colonial context of Edmonton’s inner city. Finally, we examine how these weekly sporting interludes also provided opportunities for more caring versions of masculinity and for more enduring forms of solidarity, support, and community to be enacted and experienced.
... During the research, I seldom encountered young women who were regularly practising parkour in public spaces. On this issue, Kidder's (2013) has underlined the (unintentional) exclusionary results of traceurs' performance of masculinity in urban spaces by groups of traceurs in Chicago. Mould (in press) also cautioned researchers on uncritically adopting a normalised perspective that recognises traceurs as mainly male (and predominantly white, and middle class), young, and physically able, thus skewing "the gendering of urban spatiality that is constituted by its practice" (p. ...
Article
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The following paper aims to contribute to an interdisciplinary field of enquiry addressing the ways in which lifestyle and informal sports can inform policy debate and development at various levels. It will do so by considering the ambivalent position that parkour is taking within policies of urban and community re-branding enacted in Turin, Italy. Parkour in Turin is an increasingly structured discipline often endorsed by events celebrating the city’s vibrancy, and by local projects that target youth, and promote social participation. However, this discipline implies also a spontaneous and irreverent engagement with urban spaces that often creates frictions and conflicts between traceurs (parkour practitioners) and other actors in relation to what constitutes the public, how it should be used and by whom. Drawing on 14 months of ethnographic research with a group of 20 traceurs predominantly of migrant origins, this study focuses on the participants’ ambivalent engagement with one project promoting social participation through sports in Turin’s urban spaces. Building on the ethnographic material, this paper addresses the emerging relationship between social projects, informal urban practices and emerging forms of creative urbanism. The discussion focuses on the ambiguities and fault lines of urban agendas incorporating lifestyle and informal sports in their (neoliberal) vocabulary of community and place regeneration. However, this paper calls also for the necessity to engage with spontaneous, informal physical practices as a way to acknowledge, and support existing, contested negotiations of citizenship and belonging in urban spaces.
Conference Paper
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Parkour is a discipline of movement and the skill of efficient movement from one place to another, in which a person chooses his own path. During movement in the most varied conditions traceur encounters natural or urban obstacles that he overcomes as quickly and efficiently as possible using his own body. The movie Yamakasi was the inspiration for many to train this skill around the world. Bogdan Cvetković is considered the founder of parkour in Serbia. In 2004, he founded a parkour forum through which "traceurs" from cities all over Serbia communicated. In the same year, the first gathering was held in Čačak. The first workshop of this kind in Serbia was held in 2006 in Kraljevo. The officially legally established parkour association was formed in 2007 in Kraljevo under the name Parkour 4 all. The turning point in the further development of parkour in Serbia was in 2008, when the founder of world parkour, David Bell, visited Serbia. International cooperation began in 2008, first with Germany, then France, Great Britain, Switzerland, and Italy, and cooperation expanded even to Qatar and Taiwan. Since 2009, regular outdoor and indoor trainings have been organized in the hall of the Faculty of Sports and Physical Education, University of Belgrade. It continues with courses, camps for adults and children, birthdays and team building. The first appearance in media in Serbia was recorded in the year 2003. The filming of commercials with the theme of parkour began in 2008 (ParkourSrbija, 2008), while the reportage about this activity in the program "Sasvim prirodno" (RTS Sasvim prirodno - Zvanični kanal, 2017) had the greatest impact. Although terrain movements have been performed since the appearance of the subject of the outdoor activities, from 2021, in the field teaching of the subject, parkour begins to be studied under its original name. Today, there are about 150 active traceurs in Serbia.
Article
Паркур як вид спорту також відомий як «фріраннінг», довгий час був джерелом великого ентузіазму, особливо серед підлітків та молодих людей. Паркур не є видом спорту, який передбачає змагання, конкуренцію та прагнення перемогти суперника. Основна ідея паркуру полягає у силі, свободі, мужності та дисципліні. Проаналізовані літературні джерела не містять жодної інформації про використання паркуру у шкільній освіті України, тоді як він активно та широко застосовується для школярів Швейцарії впродовж усього періоду навчання у школі. У шкільній системі освіти України на уроках фізичної культури використовуються елементи смуги перешкод та ускладнені естафети із завданнями. Заняття паркуром, як і долання смуги перешкод, сприяють розвитку фізичних якостей, проте «начинку» вони мають різну, але обидва поняття беруть свій початок у легкій атлетиці. У результаті порівняльного аналізу застосування елементів паркуру та елементів смуги перешкод відповідно у Швейцарській конфедерації та в Україні в контексті шкільної освіти було виявлено суттєву різницю. Проходження смуги перешкод у класичному варіанті сприяє розвитку фізичних якостей: спритності, швидкості, координації та сили, залежно від поставлених завдань, а також має загальнооздоровчий вплив. У вітчизняній шкільній системі смуга перешкод використовується як різновид легкоатлетичних вправ, елементи якої застосовуються на уроках з фізичної культури з 1 по 11 класи, а також як засіб та метод на заняттях з фізичного виховання у закладах вищої освіти (ЗВО) та у Збройних Силах України (ЗСУ). Основна мета паркуру полягає в напрацюванні рухових і координаційних умінь і навичок, здатних забезпечити швидке, безпечне й ефектне переміщення в умовах наявності фізичних перешкод, задля максимально ефектного і нестандартного їх подолання. Цілі паркуру досягаються лише за допомогою тіла і духу, що робить паркур одним із найбільш унікальних молодіжних рухів.
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BMX bike riding is one of the sports which has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity with American youth due to the creation of ESPN2's X Games. The popularity of the X Games has been instrumental in, if not creating the desire for new 'alternative' sporting activities, at least cultivating the growth and popularity of these athletic pursuits. Like skateboarding and in-line skating in their "extreme" forms, BMX riding is performed on a half-pipe and street course, but unlike the former, there are other forms of BMX competition such as flatland competitions and dirt jumping. BMX has become one of the marquee sports of the summer X Games, with its top performers (TJ Lavin, Matt Hoffman, Jay Miron, Denis McCoy, Ryan Nyquist, and others) some of the central figures frequently used to represent the ethos of "extreme" sports. The ethos of this media-created conglomeration of 'nonmainstream' sporting practices is characterized by the valorization of risk-taking behaviors; the emphasis of creativity, individuality, and marking oneself as "different"; and the participation in activities individually performed but practiced in small groups that value a sense of community.
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Following criticism leveled at sociologists by Chris Rojek and Bryan Turner in "Decorative Sociology: A Critique of the Cultural Turn," this article identifies a troubling absence of systematic con textualization in sport sociology. In addressing this issue, I begin by describing the role of history and context in sociology and conclude that the discipline should take history more seriously, not least by giving context greater due. I then engage the debate as to whether radical contextual cultural studies or social history offers the best explanation of context. Here I argue for the latter. In justifying my position, I adapt a model employed by the conservative social historian Arthur Marwick in "The sixties: Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, c. 1958-c. 1974," to contextualize a contemporary cultural phenomenon, the female boarder (i.e., the female surfboard rider, skateboarder, and snowboarder). Ultimately, this paper illustrates that the systematic and transhistorical tools developed by social historians have the potential to facilitate a more all-encompassing contextualization of cultural phenomena, to examine multiple historical conjunctures, and to help sociologists take time and change more seriously.
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Drawing on the concept of cultural politics, this paper explores the cultural construction of gender identities among men and women, emphasizing their historical and geographical specificity. It examines the extent to which patriarchal gender relations lead to the oppression of some (gay and heterosexual) men as well as being inherently exploitative of women. Notwithstanding the powerful fit between "dominant' (or hegemonic) masculinity and "compliant' (subordinate) femininity, the paper recognizes a plurality of masculinities and femininities, accessed through a selection of representations of gender difference. While new forms of masculinity may have emerged from the challenge of feminism and gay political activism, the weight of evidence points to the resilience of patriarchal structures rather than to any dramatic shift in the balance of power between men and women. The paper provides new evidence from current research in Bradford. It concludes with an agenda for future research on the spatial structures that underpin dominant forms of masculinity and indicate the lines of possible resistance. -Author
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The purpose of this article is to advance a new understanding of gender as a routine accomplishment embedded in everyday interaction. To do so entails a critical assessment of existing perspectives on sex and gender and the introduction of important distinctions among sex, sex category, and gender. We argue that recognition of the analytical independence of these concepts is essential for understanding the interactional work involved in being a gendered person in society. The thrust of our remarks is toward theoretical reconceptualization, but we consider fruitful directions for empirical research that are indicated by our formulation.
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Parkour is a new sport based on athletically and artistically overcoming urban obstacles. In this paper, I argue that the real world practices of parkour are dialectically intertwined with the virtual worlds made possible by information and communication technologies. My analysis of parkour underscores how globalized ideas and images available through the Internet and other media can be put into practice within specific locales. Practitioners of parkour, therefore, engage their immediate, physical world at the same time that they draw upon an imagination enabled by their on‐screen lives. As such, urban researchers need to consider the ways that virtual worlds can change and enhance how individuals understand and utilize the material spaces of the city.
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This article returns to an earlier discussion on `sport and space' that began in a 1993 special issue of the International Review for the Sociology of Sport. In this article I initiate a discussion and debate that aims to move spatial inquiry beyond a focus on `place' in order to more clearly link the relation between identity and the spaces through which identity is produced and expressed. Reframing the focus to include a broader cultural analysis enables sport sociologists to more closely examine the geography of social relations. In particular, this article considers how relations of gender, sexuality and race are produced, negotiated and contested in social space. This discussion is largely situated in the work of French theorist Henri Lefebvre and contextualized in the recent `spatial turn' in sport sociology.
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Many amateur sportsmen in the West, have today started undertaking long and intensive ordeals where their personal capacity to withstand increasing suffering is the prime objective. Running, jogging, the triathlon and trekking are the sorts of ordeal where people without any particular ability are not pitting themselves against others but are committed to testing their own capacity to withstand increasing pain. Constantly called upon to prove themselves in a society where reference points are both countless and contradictory and where values are in crisis, people are now seeking a one-to-one relationship by redical means, testing their strength of character, their courage and their personal resources. Going right on to the end of a self-imposed ordeal gives a legitimacy to life and provides a symbolic plank that supports them. Performance itself is of secondary significance; it has a value only to the individual. There is no struggle against a third party, only a method for reinforcing personal will-power and over-coming suffering by going right to the limit of a personally imposed demand. The physical limit has come to replace the moral limit that present-day society is failing to provide. Overcoming suffering tempers the individual, providing a renewed significance and value to his life.
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This article examines the intersection of alternative sport practices and spatial regulation ideologies in urban environments through an analysis of skateboarding terrains. It forwards skateboard spaces as contradictory sites for both practicing and contesting urban governance. These urban spaces span the gamut from do-it-yourself struggles for public space to public—private partnerships and corporate brand-building theme parks. Skatespots, skateparks, and skateplazas conform locations of exhilarating desire that frame skateboarding within a landscape of social control. The article surveys the found and purpose-built sites to demonstrate the political potential of skateboarding within variations on the themes of accommodation and resistance to spatial regulation.
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This article explores the sensual world of men who surf. Self-reflexive and fictocritical in tone, it meditates on how many studies of masculinity tend to separate the social and bodily. The article maps a way to pull bodies and feelings back into such studies in a productive manner. Affect theory is used to evidence how doing masculinity is built on feelings and intimacy. In turn, the article grounds gender in the activities of everyday life that function to bring together the sociological, psychological, and biological. Furthermore, the article argues that by researching through bodies, it is possible to complicate traditional tropes of masculinity that position it as stable and unemotional. Most important, the researcher's body is shown to be integral to any imagination of how the surfing culture works.
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As innovated by French “free runners” David Belle and Sébastien Foucan in the1990s, Parkour is a physical cultural lifestyle of athletic performance focusing on uninterrupted and spectacular gymnastics over, under, around, and through obstacles in urban settings. Through the public practice of Parkour across late modern cities, advocates collectively urge urban pedestrians to reconsider the role of athleticism in fostering self—other environment connections. This article taps ethnographic data collected on Parkour enthusiasts in Toronto (Canada). For 2 years, the author spent time in the field with “traceurs” (i.e., those who practice Parkour) and conducted open-ended interviews with them regarding their experiences with the movement. In this article, the author explores Parkour as an emerging urban “anarcho-environmental” movement, drawing largely on Heidegger's critique of technology along with Schopenhauer's understanding of the will to interpret the practice of Parkour as a form of urban deconstruction.
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This article examines two action sports—skydiving and snowboarding—as cases of women on men's turf and explores the construction of gender in the ways women negotiate space in these male-dominated arenas. It investigates some of the ways in which women's participation in these activities is constrained and the strategies women employ to carve out spaces for themselves in these sporting contexts. Women in both sports tend to engage in strategies rooted in middle-class and liberal notions of resistance. Most of these exemplify what researchers have called “reproductive agency.” Some strategies, however, seem to exemplify “resistant agency.” The article explores the potential of these strategies to bring about meaningful social change.
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In this article, I examine how triathletes learn to physically manage, socially perform and individually reflect upon the endurance sport of triathlon as a microcosm of the ‘civilising process’. Elias’s particular conceptualisation of habitus is centrally utilised to explain why, at this particular point in civilising processes, more men and women in factions of the Canadian middle class quest for ‘exciting significance’ through gruelling endurance sports like triathlon (swim‐bike‐run competitions). Pain and suffering narratives gathered from 62 participants in Canadian triathlon are analysed alongside ethnographic data collected over a three‐year period in Ontario, Canada. Specifically addressed is how triathletes come together as a mutually recognised ‘pain community’ of like‐minded actors, and how they learn to relish physical and mental suffering in the sport.
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Parkour, or l'art du déplacement, has become widely practised in recent years, with most of its participants (or traceurs) conducting it in urban environments. Studying parkour and those who practise it provides urban geographers with a new and fascinating way in which movement is perceived in the city. Using the theoretical idioms of 'smooth and striated space' (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987, A Thousand Plateaus Continuum, London) and 'the event' (Badiou, 2005, Being and Event Continum, London), this paper will position parkour as an alternate way of theorising the city as an arena for capitalist versus subversive practices. Moving away from the idea of smooth space incorporating a 'war machine', the Badiouian event is a more appropriate lens through which to theorise parkour and its participants' relationship with the city, in that it embraces a serene ethos of urban rediscovery.
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Parkour is both a leisure practice and a method of navigating the objects and spaces of urban environments. Leisure practices are increasingly being acknowledged as contested political arenas and being theorised as resistance. Constraints have traditionally been characterised as impeding participation in a leisure practice. Recent research has, however, suggested a more situational understanding that seeks to account for the experience of leisure constraints and their negotiation. Issues of power and resistance must therefore be included within discussions of the organisation of, and access to, leisure settings and the complex processes through which individuals negotiate constraints. This paper draws upon original empirical research to explore leisure constraints within the context of post‐structural theorisations of power, resistance, and the organisation of public space. Multi‐method qualitative research was conducted with an international sample of participants and texts comprising semi‐structured interviews and textual and discursive analysis of media articles and Website material. Key findings relate to the spatial‐cognitive processes through which participants reinterpret material‐spatial restrictions upon public behaviour to facilitate unscripted leisure practice and creative play. A significant conclusion is reached, that the spontaneous fun and creativity characteristic of Parkour is not achieved by the removal of constraint, but by the reinterpretation and utilisation of constraints — by empowering the individual to wrest (admittedly partial and momentary) control of the power relations embedded within public urban spaces.
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While both men and women work out in contemporary gyms, popular conceptions of the gym as a masculine institution continue. The authors examine organizational processes within a chain of women-only gyms to explore whether and how these processes have feminized the historically masculine gym. They examine the physical setting and equipment, the established procedures for customers' use of machines, and the interactional styles of employees as components of the organization's structure. They argue that the organization's use of technology and labor mobilizes customers' participation in a feminized organizational culture of nonjudgmental and noncompetitive sociability. Organizational processes create a context that fosters gendered interactions and identities among customers. The organizational context calls gendered behavior into play such that the performance is naturalized. The processes outlined may occur in other cases of organizational recoding and suggest ways that transposable gender practices may change the gender coding of an institution yet leave gender hierarchies intact.
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In the first part, the paper examines the constitution of climbing as a play-like activity with respect to the physical environment, hazard and jeopardy, and the social construction of a standard of jeopardy sufficient for different environments. Second, the social production of the activity prior to 1865 is considered in terms of completing an ascent, and the production of the activity as a sport after 1865 in terms of completing an ascent the hard way. Third, the social reality of climbing is discussed as being reproduced with a shared framework of concepts and experience. Fourth, social transformation within the subculture of climbing is considered in terms of raising doubt, negotiating the standard of jeopardy, and the practice of individualism as limited by social constraints.
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Recent analysis of sexism in sport has tended to take a simplistic view of the situation based on the assumption that if equal numbers of women and men played sport, then equality would have been achieved; a rather similar assumption to the equal opportunity view of education and paid employment. However, if we are to take the issue seriously, we must realise that the relationship between sport and gender inequality is much more complex than this. This paper attempts to tease out some of the ways in which sport contributes to male dominance in general, rather than merely to the perpetuation of sport's own internal, unequal structure. It is suggested that sport serves to ritually support an aura of male competence and superiority in publicly acclaimed skills, and a male monopoly of aggression and violence. A corollary of this is an inferiorisation of women and their skills, and their isolation from the ultimate basis of social power—physical force. These effects act to support patriarchal ideology and are usefully seen as occurring through a process which Lukes, following a well established sociological tradition, designates as the mobilisation of bias.
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This article engages debates on emotional geography and non-representational theory by considering fear as a distinctly mobile engagement with our environment. Parkour, or freerunning, has exploded into public consciousness through commercial media representations and films. It is depicted as a spectacular urban sport that either can or cannot be done. Through ethnographic research with groups of parkour practitioners I consider what has been excluded from these representations: the emotions involved in trying, experimenting, and gradually learning to be in places differently. In parkour places are ‘done’ or mobilised in tentative, unsure, ungainly and unfinished ways which can be characterised by a kind of play with architecture. I argue that this play is contingent upon an array of fears, which, rather than being entirely negative, are an important way in which practitioners engage with place. Here fears can manifest differently, not only restricting mobility, but in some cases encouraging imaginative and playful forms of movement.
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This article is concerned with the changing relationships between space, gender and surfing bodies. To examine how gender and surf space are mutually constituted, this paper draws on empirical materials from qualitative research carried out with young people who surf the breaks of the Illawarra, New South Wales, Australia. The article is framed within theoretical works relating to Elspeth Probyn's spatial imperative of subjectivities and the performance of corporeal femininities and masculinities. The results suggest while diversities, complexities and contradictions are present within the gendered attributes of surfing spaces, the power of dualistic ideas continue to play an important role in framing the relationships between space, gender and surfing bodies.
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The “social contract” becomes part of the lived experience of little boys when they discover that the school forbids the warrior narratives through which they initially define masculinity and imposes a different, public sphere; masculinity of rationality and responsibility. They learn that these narratives are not to be lived but only experienced symbolically through fantasy and sport in the private sphere of desire. Little girls, whose gender-defining fantasies are not repressed by the school, have less lived awareness of the social contract.
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In an era where girls are seen to be predominantly postfeminist, we investigate the potential for a feminist politics within the subject position of "skater girl." We explore the actions of eight girls, "the Park Gang," and their purposeful positioning as skateboarders within one local park in Vancouver, Canada. By challenging the male-dominated culture of skateboarding, the Park Gang worked to expand the possibilities for subjectivity within girlhood. As well, by occupying the position of "skater girl," the Park Gang enacted a bodily resistance to other girls at the park who used emphasized femininity as a source of power. This discursive and embodied resignification of girlhood challenges conventional thinking about today's girls and their disassociation from a feminist politics. We conclude by suggesting that feminism, if it is to continue to be relevant to younger generations, must stay on the move in order to keep up with these and other transformations within girlhood.
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Previous research has identified sport as a practice that creates and legitimizes notions of male dominance. However, gender is constructed and resisted differently within various sporting activities. This article addresses the diversity of masculinities in sport through an exploration of the construction of gender in an emerging sport—snowboarding. The analysis identifies four social practices used by male snowboarders to construct their sport as a masculine practice: (a) appropriation of other cultural masculinities, (b) interaction and clothing styles, (c) violence and aggression, and (d) emphasized heterosexuality. The findings indicate that the historical context of snowboarding and the social class, race-ethnicity, and age of snowboarding participants influence the social practices used to create masculinity. Although snowboarders rely on different social practices to construct masculinity than those used in organized sports, these practices also serve to support notions of male dominance and difference from women.
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Sociological studies sensitive to the issue of place are rarely labeled thus, and at the same time there are far too many of them to fit in this review. It may be a good thing that this research is seldom gathered up as a “sociology of place,” for that could ghettoize the subject as something of interest only to geographers, architects, or environmental historians. The point of this review is to indicate that sociologists have a stake in place no matter what they analyze, or how: The works cited below emplace inequality, difference, power, politics, interaction, community, social movements, deviance, crime, life course, science, identity, memory, history. After a prologue of definitions and methodological ruminations, I ask: How do places come to be the way they are, and how do places matter for social practices and historical change?
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Parkour has emerged in the last decade as a significant cultural practice, both in France, where it originated, and internationally. The cultural resonance of parkour - a form of street gymnastics combining acrobatic agility with a creative approach to urban space - is emphasised through its presence on numerous internet sites, as well as representations in advertising media, the bande dessinee, and films. While the prevalence of parkour as a practice is widely known, these numerous manifestations within culture have not been widely theorised. This article focuses primarily on parkour's representations in visual culture, especially in cinema, and considers the associations made in two films between parkour and the banlieue. Analysing both the legitimacy and potential problems in making the banlieue a stage for parkour performance and big-screen entertainment enables us to reconsider the notion of the film banlieue, as well as the political possibilities of a 'parkour film'. Lastly, reflecting on the circumstances of contemporary cinema and the role of the internet, the article considers philosophical aspects of the 'parkour film', as well as seeking parallels between parkour's spatial practices and the practices of cinematic and online production and distribution. © 2010 Association for the Study of Modern & Contemporary France.
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In this paper, I focus on football culture in the UK and the presence of homophobia in the men’s professional game. In particular, I explore how football fans, through sound and visual display, produce homophobia within the spaces of the stadia. In this way, I offer a contribution to existing debate surrounding the spatiality of sexuality and the social and political significance of sporting spaces. I demonstrate the normalisation of homophobic chanting and homophobic gesticulation, and suggest that it is dominant ideas surrounding gay men’s sexual activity, penetrative sex and men’s bodies, which are central to these articulations of homophobia. I explain this emphasis on men’s embodied sexuality and sexual activity in relation to the materiality of men’s bodies in sport spaces. Moving on from this context, I draw on preliminary research to consider the possibilities that may work to contest dominant versions of homophobia and the existing spatialities of homophobia in men’s football. Discussion is based on semi‐structured interviews with two men heavily involved in The Justin Campaign – an ‘anti‐homophobia in football’ project established in Brighton on 2 May 2008. The Justin Campaign seeks to make visible the tragic death of Justin Fashanu (on 2 May 1998) and his plight as a young gay black player. Fashanu remains the only professional footballer to date – in the UK – to publicly self‐identify as ‘gay’. This is significant and I consider past treatment of Fashanu as well as the campaign’s celebration of him to drive their anti‐homophobia initiatives. In all, the paper has two fundamental aims, firstly, to address the lack of existing debate on the spatiality of homophobia in men’s elite football and secondly, to raise awareness of the recently established: The Justin Campaign.
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This paper explores gendered relations and identities which evolved amongst street skateboarders. Drawing from Bourdieu, we suggest that various social fields such as ‘skateboarding media’, ‘D.I.Y. (Do It Yourself) culture’, and ‘lifestyle/action sports’ overlapped and worked to maintain gendered divisions within street skateboarding based upon the logics of individualism and embodiment. Masculine habituses were most closely associated with risk‐taking behaviours and technical prowess; they became significantly rewarded with social and cultural capital. Conversely, women’s habituses were considered as lacking in skill and aversive to risk‐taking. Women thus came to be positioned as inauthentic participants in the street skateboarding social field and were largely excluded from accessing symbolic capital. Corporate‐sponsored and supervised skate events which were explicitly set up to be gender inclusive provided a strong counter to ‘street’ practices. These ‘All Girl’ events were considered ‘positive’ and ‘empowering’ spaces by the women in our study. We explore how these spaces might work alongside women‐focused niche media forms in order to support resistant femininities and practices which might underpin more egalitarian gender relations in street skateboarding.
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looks at masculinity in the persona of the comic book superhero details the part such heroes play in forming the image of masculinity (and femininity) for adolescent boys [particularly between the ages of 10-15] / finds that both Superman and the newer superheroes present a fundamentally patriarchal view of the world, where the good guys are predominantly middle-class white males who seek justice through vigilantism / women and people of color are mostly relegated to either invisibility or traditional roles (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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Voluntary Risk Taking in Late ModernityDevelopment of the Edgework ConceptTheorizing EdgeworkThe Structural Context of Voluntary Risk TakingConclusions Further Reading
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This article contributes to recent debates between supporters of the concept of hegemonic masculinity, as exemplified by R. W. Connell, and a new generation of gender scholars, as to how best explain the dynamic and fluid relationships between men, and men and women, in the early 21st century. Here, the author concurs with many of Connell’s critics and proceeds by arguing that recent feminist extensions of Bourdieu’s original conceptual schema—field, capital, habitus, and practice—may help reveal more nuanced conceptualizations of masculinities, and male gender reflexivity, in contemporary sport and physical culture. This author examines the potential of such an approach via an analysis of masculinities in the snowboarding field. In so doing, this article not only offers fresh insights into the masculine identities and interactions in the snowboarding field but also contributes to recent debates about how best to explain different generations and cultural experiences of masculinities.