Skateboarding, Space and the City: Architecture and the Body
Abstract
Skateboarders are an increasingly common feature of the urban environment - recent estimates total 40 million world-wide. We are all aware of their often extraordinary talent and manoeuvres on the city streets. This book is the first detailed study of the urban phenomenon of skateboarding. It looks at skateboarding history from the surf-beaches of California in the 1950s, through the purpose-built skateparks of the 1970s, to the street-skating of the present day and shows how skateboarders experience and understand the city through their sport. Dismissive of authority and convention, skateboarders suggest that the city is not just a place for working and shopping but a true pleasure-ground, a place where the human body, emotions and energy can be expressed to the full. The huge skateboarding subculture that revolves around graphically-designed clothes and boards, music, slang and moves provides a rich resource for exploring issues of gender, race, class, sexuality and the family. As the author demonstrates, street-style skateboarding, especially characteristic of recent decades, conducts a performative critique of architecture, the city and capitalism. Anyone interested in the history and sociology of sport, urban geography or architecture will find this book riveting.
... Premièrement, les visites mettent en avant qu'un habiter alternatif permet de révéler les richesses du territoire, à l'image du skateboard qui utilise des lieux « banals » pour tenter de réécrire la ville en insérant du sens dans les espaces qui en sont dénués a priori (Borden, 2001 ;Laurent et Gibout, 2010). (Raymen, 2019a). ...
... D'une part, la ville toute entière devient ce terrain de jeu, à l'image de l'idée d'Aldo van Eyck pour qui tous les éléments du mobilier peuvent être détournés par les enfants dans une finalité ludique en ce qu'ils sont plus « vrais » que le mobilier créé pour le jeu lui-même (Paquot, 2015). Ainsi, Borden (2001) (2) le Schéma de cohérence territoriale de Bordeaux a intégré, en 2019, le skateboard dans ses principes guidant l'aménagement spatial, notamment à travers la mise en place de mobilier-oeuvres temporaires de glisse et de roule dans le cadre de la saison culturelle (Pointillard, 2020). Cet exemple rejoint la ligne de conduite du skate-urbanism, c'est-à-dire l'intégration de la pratique dans la définition de l'espace public ...
... Le second groupe est composé d'un seul auteur, Borden, qui pèse à lui seul près de 1 % des références citées par les papiers de la revue de littérature. Il s'affirme comme un auteur central pour le sujet, notamment du fait de son ouvrage incontournable(Borden, 2001) utilisé par plus d'un tiers des papiers du corpus. Il y traite en effet d'un questionnement similaire mais appliqué au skateboard, ce qui illustre l'influence importante des travaux réalisés sur cette pratique pour le développement des réflexions sur le parkour et la ville. ...
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Bien que jouer, se divertir ou flâner permettent de s'épanouir en ville, la place du récréatif n'y est pas si évidente. Offrir des espaces de récréation dans l'environnement urbain fait consensus mais l'idée que la ville soit en elle-même un territoire récréatif soulève des enjeux. Ce travail vise donc à étudier la construction, l'interrogation et la régulation de la ville récréative dans ses dimensions matérielle, sociale et politique. L'enquête s'intéresse au parkour et à l'urbex, deux pratiques de loisir transgressives liées au monde urbain. L'investigation repose sur des analyses bibliométriques pour la construction des orientations de la recherche, sur une immersion parmi les pratiquants de ces activités et sur des entretiens avec différents acteurs de la ville. La démarche est donc exploratoire et inductive, impliquant une certaine réflexivité. Au-delà des questions de dualités spatiales, de revendication, de transgression et de rapport à la ville, les principaux résultats s'articulent en trois niveaux : l'individu, le groupe humain et le territoire de la ville. Ils mettent en avant l'intérêt de tenir davantage compte de l'expérience récréative dans l'appréhension de la ville, de considérer la récréativité urbaine pour renouveler les compréhensions de l'espace urbain ainsi que de reconnaître et d'accepter le caractère diffus et inhérent du récréatif pour que la ville en bénéficie. En somme, ce travail invite à (re)donner une place à la récréation dans le temps et l'espace urbains.
... It is therefore assumed, often, that subcultural participation correlates with youth and young adulthood and that a subsequent withdrawal from subcultural involvement parallels a transition to adulthood and an eventual embrace of conformity (Haenfler, 2013;Jenks, 2004). With subcultures such as skateboarding often fixated with youthful bodies and qualities associated with youth such as rebelliousness and risk-taking, and because skateboarding is an intrinsically physical and embodied activity (Bäckström & Sand, 2019;Borden, 2001;Woolley & Johns, 2001), it is salient to consider how attachments to skate subculture may not be maintained into middle age inactivity. Further, given the fact that skateboarding subculture was and still is a male-dominated subculture worldwide (Bäckström & Nairn 2018;Willing et. ...
... Borden's (2001, p. 6) ground-breaking book on skateboarding took as its source material archives of magazines such as Thrasher and the UK's Sidewalk Surfer. Skate magazines (Borden, 2001;Wheaton & Beal, 2003), and more recently social media sites such as Instagram (Dupont, 2020), are therefore understood as vehicles for communicating the shared norms and values used to support skater identities (Encheva et al., 2013;Wheaton & Beal, 2003) and as valuable artifacts in capturing the now lengthy history involving multiple generations of practitioners and a fluid and evolving culture (Lombard, 2016). Put simply, as Snyder (2012, p. 326) notes, skateboarding 'sustains itself and progresses through the documentation of skateboard tricks disseminated through subculture media like magazines and videos'. ...
... For example, the sample and the methods used make it difficult to identify and analyse the perceptions and meanings of former skaters outside of the North American context. Further, the valorization of a romanticized past may conflict with changing demographics of skating (Borden, 2001;Lombard, 2016) and the growing importance of progressive and future-orientated practices and aesthetics of skateboarding (Geckle & Shaw, 2020). Further research is needed to examine how mediated memories are engaged with and interpreted by different groups and generational cohorts of current and former skaters. ...
The reappearance of VHS skateboarding movies produced during the 1990s on YouTube presents a timely opportunity to examine how the subcultural identities of former skateboarders are reassessed in later life. Drawing on subcultural studies and theories of mediated memory, this article analyses comments made by viewers of YouTube re-postings of 411 Video Magazine, an era-defining skateboard movie series of the 1990s. The analysis suggests that re-viewing content of once cherished VHS tapes affords former skaters a nostalgic moment of reconnection with their youth involving a combination of three forms of nostalgia: subcultural nostalgia, biographical nostalgia, and format nostalgia. For many viewers, re-viewing skate videos retrospectively recognizes the formative role skateboarding played in shaping their identity and also allows an appraisal of both the past subcultural formation and the media format through which its values were expressed and communicated.
... Studies into the human experience and physical spatial conditions have included bike messenger practice (Kidder, 2009), parkour (Kidder, 2012), skateboarding (Borden, 2001) and riding the subway (Ocejo & Tonnelat, 2014). There is little research into the spatial practices of art gallery visitors, taking into account the mediation of smart device technology and Instagram. ...
... The spaces "overlap, not juxtapose, one another" (Zhang, 2006, p. 222) which means "space is at once the result and the cause, product and producer" (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 142). The production of space is illustrated in Borden's (2001) examination of the spatial practices of skateboarders, ...
... in fact the way it was used by visitors was not part of the imagined engagement. The same contradiction has been found in spatial theory, for example skateboarde r practices (Borden, 2001) and bike messenger practices (Kidder, 2009) were found to have appropriated parts of the city against their intended purpose. ...
Since 2010, Instagram has grown to become one of the world’s most popular social media applications. Its popularity has shaped and affected the practices of many industries and institutions. An institution notably influenced by the expansion of Instagram use is art galleries. For art galleries, it is an important device for community engagement, education, promotion, interaction, participation, and the enhancing of the visitor experience. For gallery visitors, Instagram offers a social photography tool that may align with their experience objectives.
There is limited research about the use of Instagram by galleries. Knowledge of gallery visitor Instagram use and the role it plays in their experience is also limited. This research focuses on a study into the use of Instagram by visitors to the Gerhard Richter exhibition at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art (14 October 2017 – 4 February 2018). To examine how visitors experienced art through the lens of Instagram, I drew upon interviews conducted with 17 visitors and four Gallery staff. In addition, ethnographic (visual)-grounded theory fieldwork was conducted during the exhibition. 550 exhibition images were observed through Instagram and analysed in a grounded theory framework, informing the research findings.
In this thesis, I explain how and why Instagram is used by art galleries and their visitors. Also, the impact that Instagram practices has on visitors and the gallery is examined. This research project was informed by theories of aesthetic experience, sharing, and space.
The research findings revealed that the use of Instagram at the gallery engaged visitors in a manner that transcended the physical space and extended/evolved their aesthetic experience. It highlighted contemporary ways to experience art using technology and new ways to think about art appreciation. Further, the research revealed how sharing, sociality, and the social pedagogy of the gallery are impacted by Instagram use. This is particularly evident in the ways galleries and their visitors used Instagram to promote, raise awareness, and influence others to the experience of art. Recommendations are offered on how the knowledge presented in this thesis may impact upon the future practices of art galleries. The findings are significant for visitors, art galleries, and arts educators seeking to critically understand Instagram use and the opportunities for engagement.
... They discovered that parkour participants were inspired by specific environments and developed a unique familiarity whilst interacting within them. Similarly Borden (2001) who documented the rise of skateboarding explains that participants casually interact with the urban environment in pursuit of adventure and thrills. Ramps, stairways and paths are manipulated in an adhoc manner to convert the city into an adventure playground. ...
... Ramps, stairways and paths are manipulated in an adhoc manner to convert the city into an adventure playground. Borden (2001) argues that a central feature of skateboarding is the transformation of a designated physical area into something for use that is other than its originally intended use. Atkinson (2009) discovered in his ethnographic study with twelve participants in Toronto, that parkour is a social activity that functions in a supportive manner which corresponded with the features of the social theme that was produced. ...
... Similarly Borden (2001) observed a specific artistic sensibility with skateboarding in that it often occurred in derelict places, underpasses and abandoned industrial wastelands laden with graffiti. Skateboarders also utilise challenging obstacles within the environment as part of the activities inventiveness (Borden, 2001). For example, a drained swimming pool with its curved sides would be ridden around with participants perceiving the pool as something dangerous to be mastered. ...
Parkour and free running are newly emerged high risk urbanised activities still relatively understudied. They don't appear to be subject to rules and regulations with aims and objectives being unclear. There are no distinct signs of competition and yet competitors are extremely trained, highly ordered, thriving on the danger and adrenaline participation produces. The participants perform dangerous gymnastic movements utilising awkward obstacles without the use of protective clothing and don't appear to be concerned with the welfare of people in the vicinity. The activities are associated with self-improvement, endurance, discipline, strength, flexibility and balance. Parkour and free running videos are frequently posted on the self-broadcast website, YouTube. Here participants can be seen leaping from high buildings, climbing walls and jumping between handrails. This study presents the results of a phenomenological study of eight parkour and free running participants. A systematic IPA procedure was incorporated into the study to enter into a participant's reality to obtain experiences of parkour and free running. Through IPA interviews participants describe their experiences of the phenomenon being studied. It was discovered that participation provides emotional, physical and psychological development, health benefits, the development of new skills (e.g., pushing personal boundaries), an increased sense of individuality, an opportunity to acquire status and develop a new personal identity, the generation of personal meaning (philosophy, spirituality and aesthetics) and an increased sense of belonging (distinct group norms, subculturally shared experiences and a unique sense of authenticity). The participants explained that they were initially motivated by thrill seeking, risk, improved health and enjoyment. They asserted that participation provides physical and mental training, a sense of mastery and personal challenge. Regular practise and commitment furnishes a participant with a sense of being in the present and a deepened sense of spirituality and enjoyment. The unique characteristics of parkour and free running (e.g., philosophy, environment, spirituality, perception and aesthetics) are linked to the characteristics of extreme sport which indicates that parkour and free running are part of a counter culture. Index Term-Parkour, free running, self-improvement, endurance, discipline, strength, Flexibility and balance.
... The narratives presented in this first section come together to demonstrate that migration is not only an ongoing journey that can take place in stages (Scheibelhofer: 2018, 999), but can also include starts, stops, blockages, diversions, interruptions, and restarts (Collins: 2018: 972). Furthermore, I show that aspirations also undergo migration, which suggests a deeply interwoven relationship between migrant husbands, their social imaginaries, and their lived realities, echoing Borden's (2001) argument that space and the body are internalised within one another. Since the site of aspiration making often begins and most certainly includes the social imaginary (see also Appadurai: 1990), migration journeys should also include the landscape of the imagination in addition to geographical countries or locations that migrants travel through and between. ...
... Migration is therefore an embodied experience through which space and place are internalised (see also Borden: 2001). The findings overall, contribute to men and masculinity studies, migration studies, and the anthropology of Islam and Muslim societies. ...
... masculine experience. At this stage of the thesis then, we have an indication of the interrelation of the marriage:migration:masculinity nexus, in that they are deeply embedded (see also Borden: 2001), and cannot be seen as isolated from one another. ...
The thesis examines marriage and masculinities in motion through the experiences of Pakistani migrant husbands in Birmingham, UK. Drawing on the detailed life history narratives of sixty-two migrant husbands, and fourty-three community member interlocuters who were aware of and/or in contact with migrant husbands, over a thirty-month period (February 2016-August 2018), the thesis explores and is organised in three key sections: (a) aspirational masculinity, (b) liminal masculinity, and (c) (re)assertive masculinity. The first section of the thesis traces the shifts in the aspirations of migrant husbands before and after marriage and migration, showing that these shifts are experienced in relation to the masculine ideal of ‘transnational patriarch’. The second section explores the impact of marriage and migration on the experiences of masculinity. I trace the ways that migrant husbands can experience precarity, heightened levels of vulnerability, and domestic violence. As a result, I argue that migrant husbands experience a ‘liminal’ [in-between] masculinity. The final section of the thesis explores the ways in which migrant husbands practice agency and resistance. Three significant arenas of agency and resistance are highlighted: (1) engaging with Songs of Sorrow, a musical form that extends from Sufi Qawwali, (2) by engaging in religious practices that are unique to Birmingham’s ‘Sufi-scape’ in which migrant husbands develop a ‘prophetic masculinity’, (3) and by way of appearing financially secure in order to maintain their identity as ‘transnational patriarch’. The thesis engages with and contributes to the field of men and masculinity studies, migration studies, human geography, and the anthropology of Islam. The research also contributes to and paves a way forward for the ‘decolonization of Muslim men’.
... Elements of skate culture, such as clothes and shoes, permeate widely into youth culture as a recognizable style. A majority of boys are likely to have tried skateboarding, and the skate scene's image as alternative, easy going, and cool (Borden, 2001) make it an attractive bankstreet.edu/op teenage subculture. ...
... teenage subculture. Note that that image may be more apparent than real: the skate scene supports a substantial corporate industry, and the core aspects of skate culture-physical prowess and risk taking-make it in many ways a traditional arena for young men, from which girls are excluded (Borden, 2001. Freerunning and parkour arrived in North East England and in the UK in general more recently. ...
... 3. Skateboarding, Space and the City. Architecture and the Body (Borden 2001) Die bereits angesprochene Studie von Iain Borden Skateboarding, Space and the City. Architecture and the Body ist das Ergebnis einer über mehr als zehn Jahre angelegten Untersuchung, die als erste umfangreiche Studie zur Thematik von Skateboarding im städtischen Raum gilt. ...
... vgl. u. a. Beal 1996;Schwier 1998a;Borden 2001;Porter 2003;Hitzler/Niederbacher 2010;Yochim 2010;Peters 2016;Sobiech/Hartung 2017;Schwier/Kilberth 2018c). Genauso unumstritten ist allerdings auch, dass gerade in den letzten Jahren ein Anstieg der weiblichen Teilnahme zu verzeichnen ist und neue Entwicklungstendenzen zu beobachten sind (vgl.Atencio et al. 2009: 1; Willing/Shearer 2016: 46; MacKay 2016: 130; Snyder 2017: 57; Gentsch 2018a: 6; Meurle 2018: 9; Atencio/Beal/Wright/McClain 2018: 13; O'Connor 2020: 9). ...
The inclusion of skateboarding as an official discipline in the 2020 Olympic Games marks the pinnacle of a decades-long process of commercialization and sportification. Is the tightly-knit subculture in danger of losing its very identity? This anthology creates an analytical framework for understanding the fundamental conflict between skateboarding's core ethos and the tenets of institutionalized sports. Eleven acclaimed international authors from the fields of architecture, philosophy, sociology, sports sciences and gender studies provide a unique perspective on the manifold manifestations of skateboarding previously ignored by academic discourse.
... Moreover, Borden (2001; contends that the experience of skateboarding is structured around a tangible relation between the self and architectural space. This relation with urban details manifests itself through the skaters' use of architecture's "textural and objectival qualities to create a new appropriative rhythm distinct from the routinized, meaningless, passive experiences which it usually enforces" (Borden, 2001, p.200). ...
... As a result, one of the principal characteristics of the skater's eye-the ability to scan the built environment for skateable elements by looking beyond the intended functions of architectural space (Borden, 2001)-is fundamentally compromised. The skater's eye is in a certain sense superfluous, as all objects in skateparks are skateable. ...
As skaters increasingly engage with and respond to socio-political surges across the globe, skateboarding begins to refract into a multiplicity of situated practices. This includes a new wave of collectives and communities who re-imagine what cities could sound, feel, and be like. Combining filmmaking with ethnographic writing, Sander Hölsgens traces the lived experience of a small group of skaters in South Korea. As a skater among skaters, he unravels the site-specific nuances and relational meanings of skateboarding in Seoul – working towards an intimate portrait of a growing community.
... Linked to this interest in how urban public space is produced, and in particular how it is produced through practice, various scholars have turned to rhythmanalysis (Lefebvre 2004) as a means to explore the productive qualities of everyday life in cities (e.g. Borden 2001;Williamson 2016). Thirdly, Lefebvre's (1996) writings on the right to the city is at the heart of another body of work, in particular in social geography, concerned with arguments about public space and social justice (especially Mitchell 2003;also Low and Smith 2006;Butler 2013). ...
... Thirdly, Lefebvre's (1996) writings on the right to the city is at the heart of another body of work, in particular in social geography, concerned with arguments about public space and social justice (especially Mitchell 2003;also Low and Smith 2006;Butler 2013). In addition to these deployments of some of Lefebvre's theoretical work, Lefebvrian concepts (including those developed in The Production of Space) have also featured routinely in scholarship concerned with users or 'practitioners' of public space, including, but not limited to, skateboarders (Borden 2001; this volume), immigrants (Ugolotti and Moyer 2016), traceurs (Ameel and Tani 2012;Kidder 2012;Daskalaki, Stara and Imas 2007), cyclists (Spinney 2010), homeless people (Speer 2016), 'street-involved youth' (Kennelly and Watt 2011) and walkers (Fenton 2005;Williamson 2016). ...
This chapter is interested in some of Lefebvre’s more optimistic ideas about the possibilities of urbanisation and in exploring these through the analysis of an actually-existing set of urban public spaces in and around London’s Southbank Centre (at the heart of the wider ‘South Bank’ district). Drawing on data collected over the course of a 4-year ethnographic study of the transformation of the Southbank Centre, the chapter will seek to theorise and understand the ongoing transformation of the area via recourse to Lefebvre’s ideas about play as a transcendent, productive force in the city. The chapter will be most interested in the more practical, institutional and pedagogic dimensions of subordinating to play in the city according to Lefebvre, and how aspects of the transformation of London’s South Bank might be interpreted in this vein. While not entirely uncritical, the chapter will adopt Lefebvre’s sometimes optimistic stance to argue that there may yet be some hope for ‘the creation of places appropriate to a renewed fête fundamentally linked to play’ (Lefebvre 1996: 171) in contemporary cities.
... Similarly, skateboarders are drawn in by the 'trickability' of kerbs and other micromaterialities of the street such as gutters, steps and handrails (Borden, 2001;Woolley & Johns, 2001), 'dwelling with' the space (Pyyry & Tani, 2019). However, kerbs are contested spaces for skateboarders too, as a range of practices including policing, byelaws and design seek to control and limit skateboarders' use of public space, which is seen as potentially anti-social and damaging to the urban fabric (Woolley et al., 2011). ...
A dominant narrative around the impact of COVID-19 on children focuses on the risk of children being the pandemic's biggest victims. Without denying the severity of such damage, this article explores two examples of playing during the pandemic, alongside more affirmative Deleuzian accounts of desire, which can contribute to mitigating both the damage itself and what damage narratives perform. Using two fragments of data from research into children’s play during the first COVID-19 UK lockdown, we show how, despite the tightest of restrictions, moments of playfulness emerged from encounters between children, other bodies and the materiality and affective atmospheres of the street to produce moments of being well. In both fragments children play with the kerbs on the street, deterritorialising the curbs of both striated street spaces and lockdown in ways that temporarily enact a playful politics of space and produce moments of being well. We read these fragments through contemporary Deleuzian accounts of desire as a productive force. In so doing, we contribute to debates in relational ontologies of children’s geographies that address the micropolitics of children’s spatial practices.
... The best acts of liberation are unnoticed by the public, and these have the strongest chance of keeping spots alive for longer. Skateboarding challenges the prescribed use of objects and space, yet reinterpretation of the existing built form is crucial (Borden 2001). Like in Volont's (2019: 258) work on Spanish DIY collectives, the removal of skate-stoppers can be seen as producing an "urban commons" whereby the rewards are shared throughout the local skateboarding community. ...
Skate-stoppers are ubiquitous objects installed on outdoor surfaces in built environments all over the world. Skate-stoppers are an essential part of low-tech security of urban surfaces at a micro-scale—a single bench, handrail, or ledge—with the sole-purpose of protecting these surfaces from skateboarders. As such skate-stoppers are an extension of human and electronic surveillance systems, though in many patches of the urban landscape, skate-stoppers are a low-cost substitute for more sophisticated technologies. This interplay of control and liberation draws attention to surfaces in urban space and specific tactics adopted to secure and protect them through surveillance. In this article, we explore the criticality of skate-stoppers and tactics for removing them to advance the study of surveillance of small spaces. We argue that skate-stoppers are aggressive attempts to control urban space by interrupting the flow of bodies and boards along particular surfaces, namely the “spots” desired by skateboarders. Second, we argue that the installation of skate-stoppers has shifted from reaction to anticipation of skateboarders, and new construction projects now come with skate-stoppers already installed as part of surveillance infrastructure. Third, we argue that skateboarders have become adept at liberating spots from skate-stoppers, restoring flow to surfaces through both organised activism and covert acts, underscoring the limitations of surveillance using objects. We conclude with some thoughts on the disjuncture between the embrace of creative cities and the proliferation of skate-stoppers, suggesting creative play and its desired affective properties are regulated by the control of surfaces in the same spaces.
... In contrast to this, curriculum-based environmental education has the competing goal for the natural environment to also afford opportunities for young people to learn, yet is dependent upon the value that young people place on learning during environmental education, as young people attach their own values and knowledge upon spaces and places and their affordances (Borden, 2001;King & Church, 2013;Robinson, 2009;). As highlighted earlier, pedagogical wellbeing in educational settings is an important part of the learners' overall wellbeing with a key characteristic being that it is developed in the everyday practices of schooling (Pyhalto et al., 2010). ...
This thesis explores the role that curriculum-based environmental education plays in influencing young peoples' wellbeing. It adopts a social constructivist approach to understand how wellbeing is understood, articulated and experienced by young people in residential learning environments. The thesis argues that positivistic and adult-centred accounts of wellbeing have restricted our appreciation of the diverse ways in which young people engage with and recognise their emotions in educational settings. In adopting an alternative framework, the thesis argues for experiential and subjective understandings of wellbeing to be developed through a range of methodological tools. The research sought to develop these ideas by focusing on the experiences of students visiting the Field Studies Centre at Slapton Ley (Devon, UK) and utilised focus groups and solicited participant diaries, providing a basis for phenomenological inquiry that enabled a direct engagement with young people participating in environmental education programmes. The empirical research focused on the experiences of young people between the ages of 14 and 18 years on a residential, curriculum-based environmental education programme and examined the role and potential of environmental education for supporting the wellbeing of young people. From an initial thematic analysis of the data five elements were identified as key to the participants' wellbeing: wellbeing as multidimensional, social elements, psychological elements, physical health and environmental elements. These elements were then used to provide a framing for understanding young peoples' experiences of wellbeing throughout the lived experience of curriculum-based environmental education and, as a result, the research yielded three themes that provide an understanding of the key experiences of environmental education and its connection to wellbeing: experiences of place, experiences of people, and the learning experience. Using these themes and the participants' conceptualisations of wellbeing, the research then iii explored how strategies can be developed within environmental education to promote the wellbeing of young people and reveals the importance of fostering feelings of restoration, increasing social bonds and developing a sense of achievement and accomplishment. Consequently, this research contributes to the fields of environmental education and health and wellbeing research within a geographical context through demonstrating the importance of qualitative approaches in revealing the ways young people articulate their emotions in educational settings. Alongside this, it challenges assumptions about the way nature is utilised in wellbeing interventions, highlighting the role that social and cultural backgrounds can play in the way nature is experienced by different groups and how this can be addressed within environmental education. Therefore, a key contribution of this research is in providing an empirical analysis for the relationship between environmental education and wellbeing, and how to best design environmental education programmes that meet the needs of young people.
... To make this more concrete, consider Iain Borden's (2001) conceptualization of the skateboarder as a rhythmanalyst. The skateboarder senses the abstract space and linear repetitions of the city, how its flows and uses are programmed and ordered by capital, and in response, they appropriate and transform these repetitions by demonstrating and living the different uses toward which buildings and banks, stairs and railings, can be put. ...
Threading together Henri Lefebvre’s writing on space, architecture, and time, this article demonstrates the central concern of rhythmanalysis to his general project of overcoming capitalist abstraction. Reading Lefebvre’s distinction between linear and cyclical repetitions as rhythmic manifestations of the struggle between exchange-value and use-value, Ford articulates the divergent pedagogies underlying each form of repetition. Lefebvre’s project aimed at reclaiming use-value over exchange-value and cyclical over linear rhythms through the coupling of domination-détournement-appropriation, and the author next shows how post-Fordism is a perverse realization of Lefebvre’s project insofar as capital today profits from closed-developmental and open-unpredictable repetitions because capital has subsumed détournement by tethering it developmentally toward the generation of the new. This is why Lefebvre’s educational theory of rhythmanalysis (and its corresponding conception of listening) is now an insufficient pedagogical response to capitalist abstraction. In response, they build on Jason Wozniak’s reading of Lefebvre against Lefebvre to reclaim arrhythmia as a temporal gap necessary for revolutionary projects, developing a theory of arrhythmanalysis. Ford concludes the article with a coda on the political revisions required to Lefebvre’s project, which focus on a reevaluation of the actually existing spaces produced by socialist societies and serves to emphasize that rupture and arrhythmanalysis should be strategically deployed rather than uncritically celebrated.
... While these are crucial contributions to the study of urban marginality, less attention has been paid to the internal cultural and material logics that inform everyday rationalities and experiments in precarious urban life (Gidwani, 2001;Simone, 2010). These include existing coping strategies of youth whose life, work, identities and place within cities is often stigmatised and defined by negation, categorised as unemployed, idle, or a perceived nuisance for 'hanging about', loitering or making trouble (Jones, 2012;Borden, 2001;Weiss, 2009;Thieme, 2013). Young women's stories and their own paradoxical subjectivities merit particular attention (Dyson, 2009). ...
Hustling on the margins This is the story about the journey of a young woman who grew up in one of the oldest and largest informal settlements of Nairobi. Eliza’s story is inextricably tied to the broader narratives of hustling that feature centrally in everyday ‘creolised argot’ (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2005, p. 28) amongst Nairobi youth making a living outside the formal economy. ‘Hustling’ in the Kenyan context has shaped youth identities and their norms of adaptation to everyday adversity and uncertain futures. Eliza was one of the key protagonists of my PhD research, in many ways epitomizing and defying the logics of the ‘hustle economy’ (Thieme, 2013). Her journey included the impasses she faced as she aspired to do well – to get out just enough to be better off – but to stay anchored within the collective subculture of urban youth living in informal settlements or ‘slums’.
... It is clear that the physical form of the city plays a massive role in these practices. It is ironic that the sprawling, neglected, and often soulless spaces produced by such things as shopping malls, housing developments, and large office parks are the domains of choice for street athletes (Borden 2003). It appears that the ambiguity these spaces are characterized by is a fertile ground for inventing new uses. ...
What if every part of our everyday life was turned into a game? The implications of “gamification.”
What if our whole life were turned into a game? What sounds like the premise of a science fiction novel is today becoming reality as “gamification.” As more and more organizations, practices, products, and services are infused with elements from games and play to make them more engaging, we are witnessing a veritable ludification of culture.
Yet while some celebrate gamification as a possible answer to mankind's toughest challenges and others condemn it as a marketing ruse, the question remains: what are the ramifications of this “gameful world”? Can game design energize society and individuals, or will algorithmicincentive systems become our new robot overlords?
In this book, more than fifty luminaries from academia and industry examine the key challenges of gamification and the ludification of culture—including Ian Bogost, John M. Carroll, Bernie DeKoven, Bill Gaver, Jane McGonigal, Frank Lantz, Jesse Schell, Kevin Slavin, McKenzie Wark, and Eric Zimmerman. They outline major disciplinary approaches, including rhetorics, economics, psychology, and aesthetics; tackle issues like exploitation or privacy; and survey main application domains such as health, education, design, sustainability, or social media.
... A friend of Van Eijck, Constant Nieuwenhuys's New Babylon was an attempt to imagine a non-conformist city of play in which ever-changing environments would foster citizen creativity and engagement (Nieuwenhuys 1974;De Mul 2009). More recently, several studies in the same tradition focus on subcultural or countercultural urban practices like skateboarding or parkours (Borden 2001;Mould 2009). In this view, play is an everyday tactic to counter dominant structures by reclaiming agency and 'the right to the city' (Lefebvre 1996;Mitchell 2003). ...
... The right to use the city is also addressed in playful, but often confrontational ways, based on paidia and sometimes with anarchic undertones. The appropriation of spaces and monuments by groups of skaters is one of the oldest and more persistent ways of doing it ( Borden, 2001 ). Using the city can be a way of reimagining it and of challenging its traditional meaning: it is the case of the dérive of situationists ( Bonnet, 1989 ), but also of playfulbut-critical uses of the city spaces such as parkour, political fl ash mobs, park(ing) day and similar activities ( Hassan & Thibault, 2020 ). ...
... The right to use the city is also addressed in playful, but often confrontational ways, based on paidia and sometimes with anarchic undertones. The appropriation of spaces and monuments by groups of skaters is one of the oldest and more persistent ways of doing it ( Borden, 2001 ). Using the city can be a way of reimagining it and of challenging its traditional meaning: it is the case of the dérive of situationists ( Bonnet, 1989 ), but also of playfulbut-critical uses of the city spaces such as parkour, political fl ash mobs, park(ing) day and similar activities ( Hassan & Thibault, 2020 ). ...
... Raumerschließend wirken bei BMX-Fahrern, Crossgolfern, Skatern oder Traceuren deren sinnstiftenden und gelegentlich umdeutenden Handlungen, die beispielsweise eine Treppe, einen Mauervorsprung oder ein Geländer erst zu ei-ner Skate-Gelegenheit machen. Nicht zuletzt Borden (2001) (Stern, 2010, S. 66;vgl. Loret, 1995) Wenig überraschen kann daher, dass etliche Protagonisten bzw. ...
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.
... Der Autor selbst sieht seine Monographie als eine Fortführung der Analyse "Skateboarding, Space and the City. Architecture and the Body" (Borden, 2001) In ihnen sind Sieg und Niederlage nicht mehr das worauf es ankommt, sondern Merkmale wie "Virtuosität, Temporalität und Extremität" (Gugutzer, 2012, S. 119) gelten hier als erstrebenswert. ...
Skateboarding ist eine unangepasste und un- konventionelle Bewegungskultur, welche nicht auf Messbarkeit, sondern auf individuellen Stil setzt. Um diese subkulturelle und kreative Seite von Skateboarding zu erfassen und abzubilden, soll im Rahmen dieser Arbeit das Bewegungsfeld Skateboarding aus der Perspektive der Kulturellen Bildung betrachtet werden.
... By allowing such practices in democratic contexts where people's self-expression is welcomed, highly visible urban walls provide opportunities (a surface) for visibility and for drawing other's attention. As Borden (2001) has discussed, for city managers and planners this is akin to taking a risk, given that city spaces should be friction free. The bottom image of Figure 2.2 shows a wall in a NYC subway station, where everyday commuters were disrupted by an artist's unusual use of urban walls. ...
The creation of public space is intended to contribute to the civic infrastructure of a city. The conventional dichotomy of intentions versus outcomes in urban design practice posits that, while intentions represent more abstract thinking about the various facets of publicness, outcomes are the manifest realizations of those intentions in public spaces. This study grounds itself in an exploration of this intention-outcome gap to examine how urban design facilitates the production of publicness, by means of which public spaces can enable appropriations, i.e., the practices of togetherness, encounters, and expressions of different publics. Analysing the appropriations as unintended consequences is about the planning and design process, by which publicness is produced through larger strategies; and, the process of use, by which publicness is socially experienced and contested.
This research applies a comparative case study approach, as examples of brownfield developments and producing ‘city-like’ (stadsmässighet) urban environments in two practices in Sweden: the Liljeholmstorget Transit Hub in Stockholm and the Western Harbour Waterfront in Malmö. The Liljeholmstorget examines negotiations of land uses and trade-offs with private actors, and its publicness addresses informal togetherness and passive encounters in relation to collective routines of commuting and consumption. The Western Harbour Waterfront reveals a determined process to promote the city’s economic growth and image; planned for the well-being of a specific type of public, which was later contested by unexpected users and their unplanned expressions.
... This mode of being-in-theworld can only be acquired through time spent in these specific environments, and also via the transmission of somatic ways of knowing between skilled and less experienced lifeworld inhabitants. This emplaced sensory skill development can also be found in other physical cultures, for example, in skateboarding, where Borden (2001) refers to 'skateboarder's eye' and in parkour, where Clegg and Butryn (2012) consider 'parkour vision'. We interact with our socio-cultural and physical-cultural environments in an active and reciprocal way, both shaping and being fundamentally and corporeally shaped by these environments. ...
In this article, we address an existing lacuna in the sociology of the senses, by employing sociological phenomenology to illuminate the under-researched sense of temperature, as lived by a social group for whom water temperature is particularly salient: competitive pool swimmers. The research contributes to a developing ‘sensory sociology’ that highlights the importance of the socio-cultural framing of the senses and ‘sensory work’, but where there remains a dearth of sociological exploration into senses extending beyond the ‘classic five’ sensorium. Drawing on data from a three-year ethnographic study of competitive swimmers in the UK, our analysis explores the rich sensuousities of swimming, and highlights the role of temperature as fundamentally affecting the affordances offered by the aquatic environment. The article contributes original theoretical perspectives to the sociology of the senses and of sport in addressing the ways in which social actors in the aquatic environment interact, both intersubjectively and intercorporeally, as thermal beings.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0038026120915149
... This mode of being-in-theworld can only be acquired through time spent in these specific environments, and also via the transmission of somatic ways of knowing between skilled and less experienced lifeworld inhabitants. This emplaced sensory skill development can also be found in other physical cultures, for example, in skateboarding, where Borden (2001) refers to 'skateboarder's eye' and in parkour, where Clegg and Butryn (2012) consider 'parkour vision'. We interact with our socio-cultural and physical-cultural environments in an active and reciprocal way, both shaping and being fundamentally and corporeally shaped by these environments. ...
In this article, we address an existing lacuna in the sociology of the senses, by employing sociological phenomenology to illuminate the under-researched sense of temperature, as lived by a social group for whom water temperature is particularly salient: competitive pool swimmers. The research contributes to a developing ‘sensory sociology’ that highlights the importance of the socio-cultural framing of the senses and ‘sensory work’, but where there remains a dearth of sociological exploration into senses extending beyond the ‘classic five’ sensorium. Drawing on data from a three-year ethnographic study of competitive swimmers in the UK, our analysis explores the rich sensuousities of swimming, and highlights the role of temperature as fundamentally affecting the affordances offered by the aquatic environment. The article contributes original theoretical perspectives to the sociology of the senses and of sport in addressing the ways in which social actors in the aquatic environment interact, both intersubjectively and intercorporeally, as thermal beings.
... However, this study considers only insights that pay attention to the relationship of graffi ti and its media (Austin, 2001 ;Iveson, 2007 ;Snyder, 2009 ), graffi ti's learning potentials (Christen, 2003 ;Rahn, 2002 ;Valle & Weiss, 2010 ) and its recent association with the Internet (Bowen, 2010 ;MacDowall, 2008 ). Apart from the graffi ti literature, the special and constantly evolving relationship between learning, technology, and people in a subcultural context is also noted by Iain Borden ( 2001 ) in his research on skateboarding, and comprises the theoretical core of Jeffrey L. Kidder's ( 2012 ) recent study on parkour. ...
The aim of this chapter is to draw out insights concerning the central themes of the book, i.e. the themes of mobility, data and learner agency in networked learning. In the first section, we present an overview of the book’s chapters. We point out how the book’s three sections and the chapters that comprise them deal with one (or more) of the themes. This serves to highlight different contemporary takes of the networked learning community on the themes. We further highlight that the book’s ‘intro’ and ‘outro’ chapters pinpoint networked learning research practice. Between them, the chapters thus provide a characterization of the field of networked learning today, as seen through the lens of the book’s three themes. In the second section of the conclusion, we identify a set of issues emerging out of the community’s work with these themes: Demarcation and characterisation of the field of networked learning, the socio-material turn and evolving forms of networked learning design and assessment.
This chapter offers a brief history of skateboarding in the US, with its evolving social dynamics and key flashpoints of change through four main themes: (1) the California scene and the emergence of the skate industry, (2) from underground subculture to scene with market power, (3) expanding, transgressive and progressive horizons in skateboarding, and (4) further mainstreaming and a continuing culture of resistance. We discuss how skateboarding culture has moments of being progressive, but it can also be problematic and not necessarily on a linear journey to equity. Our overview also emphasizes that power dynamics in skateboarding are not always static and are open to being challenged and changed by those involved at all levels of skill, industry, and community involvement.KeywordsSkateboarding historySkate industryPower relationsNon-traditional skateboarders
Racial diversity has shaped skateboarding in the US and beyond. Scholarly attention to race and skateboarding, however, remains fixated with critiquing whiteness and consequently racial diversity is considered ethereal, subordinate, or exploited for profit. Rarely are skateboarders afforded the capacity for navigating complex racial dynamics or fluid racial identities. While wary of romanticising racial diversity in skateboarding, this article explores three possibilities for thinking about skateboarding and race drawn from media made for consumption within skate culture, video in this case. First, racial diversity is integral to skate culture in its heartlands and around the world. Second, skateboarding appeals to racially diverse participants, offering ways of being and belonging outside of families, communities, and institutions. Third, skateboarding, as a sport and culture, is overlooked as site for alternative stories about race, racism, and racial diversity both challenging and affirming broader socio-cultural experiences and narratives in time and place.
Le cyberpunk est mort en 1995, ont jadis affirmé Arthur et Marilouise Kroker, soit le jour où le film Johnny Mnemonic est sorti au cinéma. Pour eux, l’échec de cette œuvre s’explique moins par des raisons esthétiques que par l’avènement de changements culturels rapides, alors que les métaphores cyberpunk des années 1980 ne fonctionnent plus dans les années 1990. Il est vrai qu’à partir de cette époque, le numérique a pénétré toutes les facettes de notre quotidien et le fait de naviguer dans les espaces numériques est devenu une activité banale. Toutefois, la culture contemporaine n’en a pas terminé avec le cyberpunk. En la matière, les fictions produites au cours de la décennie 2010 témoignent d’un intérêt renouvelé pour ses considérations sur l’avènement d’une posthumanité, sur l’intelligence artificielle, sur le caractère vertigineux de la vie au sein de mégapoles hyper-trophiées et sur les espaces numériques. Elles témoignent également d’un bougé dans la représentation de la société contemporaine, et plus particulièrement, car c’est le sujet de cet ouvrage, dans la représentation et la simulation du milieu urbain contemporain et de son habiter. Ce sont là des signes suggérant qu’au cours de ses quatre décennies d’existence, le cyberpunk a enregistré et continue d’enregistrer en la matière des mutations dignes d’être étudiées. Cela implique la mise en texte d’une expérience du milieu urbain contemporain et de son habiter propre, qu’il s’agit de mettre au jour et que le cyberpunk, en prise sur notre époque, exacerbe pour en montrer les aspects délétères et les potentialités — désirables ou souhaitables — non exploitées.
En sus d’une verticalisation et d’un étalement croissants, les villes telles que les fictions cyberpunk nous les donnent à voir, à lire ou à jouer sont devenues, avec le passage du temps, « intelligentes ». Les technologies assurant à leurs habitants confort et sécurité se sont multipliées pour donner lieu à des « technococons », pour reprendre un néologisme d’Alain Damasio. Mais ces mêmes villes, à travers le filtre de la fiction et en fonction d’une demande croissante de prévisibilité et d’une tolérance toujours plus faible de la société face à l’incertitude, ont vu se multiplier en leur sein des dispositifs de surveillance et de prédiction emblématisés aujourd’hui davantage par les drones, les capteurs biométriques, les Big data et les traceurs que par les tours panoptiques, les caméras et les microphones miniaturisés d’autrefois, donnant lieu, dans l’exercice, à des formes de ségrégation sociospatiale et à un morcellement de l’espace public au profit d’une architecture de forteresse physique et numérique. À cette ségrégation, fruit d’une obsession sécuritaire, répond en contrepartie une autre obsession pour la vitesse et la libre circulation des biens, des personnes et de l’information, cette fois, que la ville — nœud dans un réseau économique tissé à l’échelle mondiale —, délaissant la logique des lieux en faveur d’une logique des flux, surveille et régule à l’aide d’outils nés de la cybernétique.
C’est à ces mutations du milieu et de l’habiter urbains vues au prisme du cyberpunk de la décennie 2010 que se consacre cet ouvrage dans une perspective mésocritique. Il s’agit de brosser le portrait de Cybernanthropolis, ce pendant science-fictionnel de nos villes contemporaines.
As a 52-year-old academic and mother of three, this research explores the ethics of the question ‘do I have time to go skateboarding?’ Using the themes of time, injury, ageing and learning, it explores the question in relation to Simone de Beauvoir’s ethics of ambiguity. The approach employs autoethnographic and sensory methods to document the authors own experience of learning to skateboard in her late forties and uses learning to skateboard as a vehicle from which to consider time and productivity. Embracing Beauvoir’s ethics of transcendence in navigating the psychological burden of ageing and informing the ongoing methodological approach required for making time to play, the author subverts ideas of progression and knowledge acquisition from childhood to adulthood and explores instead the converse transition from adult to child. The article draws conclusions about the value of lifelong learning and what expanded ideas about productivity mean for our ethical positioning in the world. How being in the skatepark together requires an ethical contract between skateboarders, an unambiguous ethics of being together where adhering to a system of unwritten rules means that everyone has enough space to stay safe. Risk and the time implications of injury are explored throughout in terms of the choices we make at different stages of our lives as we navigate a balance between personal desire and social good.
Skateboarding is a popular form of active transportation and recreation that reinterprets the use of public obstacles like stairs, rails, and planters for play. Through active leisure, skateboarding provides physiological, social, and emotional benefits. However, cities regulate and design out the activity through legal and architectural interventions, citing injury liability, property damage, and nuisance as justifications. In this paper, we focus on the impacts of hostile architecture and urban design in restricting skateboarding, and thus reducing opportunities to engage in cardiovascular exercise. While hostile designs target populations like unhoused people from using public space, there is little evidence of their effects on skateboarding in universities. Therefore, this paper comparatively analyses the extent of hostile designs and their impacts on skateboarding as a novel form of physical activity in three public universities in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Comparing photographs and autoethnographic accounts, we argue campuses disproportionately target skateboarding for exclusion. We find that exclusion is legitimized through temporary events and safety and damage concerns. Given the health benefits of skateboarding, we recommend skate-friendly interventions that address these concerns, create shared campus space, and reimagine universities as inclusive places for all modes of active transportation and recreation. ARTICLE HISTORY
COVID-19 ruptured mobilities within and between cities during 2020–2022. Empty urban landscapes came to define experiences, representations, and memories of lockdowns and ensuing periods of recovery. However, empty cities provided opportunities for play and exploration in subcultures like skateboarding. Skateboarders, among other groups, took advantage of relative emptiness to access known skate spots and to discover new spots, charting new cartographies of urban landscapes in the process. Performances at these spots were captured and circulated through skateboard media, especially video. Skateboarding footage captured in empty cities acts as a radical archive of alternative mobilities during the pandemic, unsettling dominant tropes of immobility. By analyzing a preeminent skate video shot in Sydney during the pandemic, this article makes three points of argument. First, skate video archives shifting speeds and scales of mobility and immobility during the pandemic; as some mobilities halted, others accelerated. Second, confusing legal geographies, what was permitted and where, created new surveillance priorities and multiple surveillance glitches. Skateboarders took advantage and accessed patches of cities usually obstructed. Third, as cities try and regain their buzz, playful, unpredictable, and unregulated mobile performances with the power to enliven the streets deserve reconsideration, even if they defy control.
India’s urban infrastructure is maligned for its breakdowns, inefficiencies, and inequities, and popular resentment at dysfunctional infrastructure is constant in public life. This article focuses on the surprising desire for India’s urban infrastructure among skateboarders. Skateboarders are drawn to India’s urban infrastructure because of its dysfunction, its seemingly unfinished nature. I explore these relationships by analysing four skate videos and making three arguments. First, infrastructure attracts skateboarders for possibilities of creative interpretation and appropriation, on‐camera aesthetics, and the encounters generated between mostly foreign (though not always “western”) skaters and local urban dwellers. Second, far from isolated moments, the appropriation of India’s infrastructure is captured and circulated to an audience of millions in skateboard videos. Third, skate video presents urban India as a frontier in its subcultural geographic and cartographic imagination; although over two decades India’s cities have drifted closer to skateboarding’s core; concrete and steel replacing cows and festivals on screen. The article closes by exploring the implications for skateboarding—a subculture built on disrupting the city, hacking its infrastructure, moving against its flows—when operating in spaces where disruption is the essential condition of everyday life, and how this is transmitted to an adjacent viewing public. Skateboarders are drawn to India’s urban infrastructure because of its dysfunction. Specifically, India’s infrastructure offers possibilities for creative interpretation and appropriation, on‐camera aesthetics, and encounters between mostly foreign (though not always “western”) skaters and local urban dwellers. The appropriation of India’s infrastructure is captured and circulated to an audience of millions in skateboard video, presenting urban India as a frontier in its subcultural geographic and cartographic imagination.
Desde os anos 1990, o skate tornou-se uma realidade presente na maioria das grandes cidades do Brasil. Este artigo pretende problematizar a prática do skate de rua no con-texto da ressignificação e subversão criativa das formas e dos equipamentos urbanos (contrauso skatista). O skate de rua não se realiza em espaços separados daqueles da vida cotidiana. Desse modo, sua permeabilidade, isto é, sua presença nas ruas, praças e calçadas constitui-se, na maior parte das vezes, em atividade "clandestina" e, por isso mesmo, passível de repressão. Tendo em vista esses conflitos em potencial, este artigo pretende estabelecer uma análise comparativa de casos particulares de apropriação de espaços públicos por skatistas na cidade do Rio de Janeiro. Busca-se demonstrar, antes de tudo, que a reflexão sobre esse tema marginal, pouco desenvolvido ou mesmo negligen-ciado por sua "menor importância", permite compreender conflitos mais gerais relativos à apropriação e à produção social do espaço. Palavras-chave: Contra-uso; Skate; Espaço público. Abstract Since the 1990s, skateboarding has become a present reality in most major cities in Bra-zil. This article aims to discuss the practice of street skating in the context of reinterpre-tation and creative subversion of shapes and urban equipment (skateboarders' counter use). The street skating is not carried out in separate areas from those of everyday life. Thus, its permeability, that is, your presence on the streets, squares and sidewalks is constituted, in most cases, in "underground" activity and, therefore, liable to prosecution. Given these potential conflicts, this article aims to establish a comparative analysis of particular cases of public spaces appropriation by skateboarders in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Seeks to demonstrate, first of all, that reflection on this theme marginal, underdeveloped or neglected by their "less importance" allows us to understand more general disputes concerning the appropriation and social production of space.
This article explores the multiple configurations, distinct agencies, negotiations and contradictions which compose the making cities and urban lives. I particularly focus on the tactical negotiations developed by street skateboarders to overcome the restrictive urban policies in São Paulo city. I recognize tactics and strategies as powerful conceptual tools to analyzes how the practice of street skateboarding involves struggles, resistances, transgressions, conflicts and negotiations, and different positions against the structures of power and control produced by urban government policies over the public areas. The São Paulo of skateboarding, therefore, presents itself not as something finished and defined, but in permanent construction due to its relational and situational character.
KEYWORDS:
Urbanity; urban spaces; street skateboarding; city; Urban Anthropology
Es scheint beinahe überflüssig zu betonen, dass wenn Ethnografinnen und Ethnografen in ein Forschungsfeld eintauchen, sich diesem ganzeinheitlich, das heißt, mit allen Sinnen hingeben. Für die Rekonstruktion des sozialen Sinns scheint es in bestimmten Lebenswelten unumgänglich, auch die Bedeutung der Sinneswahrnehmungen mit in die Analyse zu integrieren. Besonders bei körper-, und bewegungsorientierten Szenen, wie dem Skateboarding, kann das Forschungsprogramm einer sinnlichen Ethnografie fruchtbar gemacht werden. Im Aufsatz sollen die für das Skateboarding relevanten Sinne in ihrer Bedeutung für das Erleben der Szenepraxis untersucht werden.
Der Bau von öffentlichen Skateparks hat Hochkonjunktur. Doch wie lassen sich diese auf Jahrzehnte angelegten Bauvorhaben für dynamische Bewegungspraktiken, wie Skateboarding, nachhaltig attraktiv gestalten? Die öffentlichen Mittel sollen einerseits möglichst vielen potentiellen Nutzer*innen zugutekommen, andererseits soll der jugendlichen Kernzielgruppe eine Alternative zur freien Nutzung des städtischen Raums angeboten werden. Veith Kilberth beschreibt konkrete Lösungsvorschläge für diese Herausforderungen bei der Planung von Räumen für Skateboarding.
This article exposes skateboarding as a meaningful social practice within neoliberal public space. Through a qualitative inquiry of the street, it chronicles the significance of moving bodies on skateboards that disrupt neoliberalism and foment the possibility of inclusive cities. The article takes on an invitation for researchers to practice qualitative inquiry in the streets as part of its living ecology through the corporeal knowledge produced while skateboarding in Worcester, MA, USA. Furthermore, it builds on an embodied inquiry of street art and spatial justice set on challenging deep social inequalities exacerbated during the current neoliberal order. The article forwards a street inquiry of everyday life centered on skateboarding, public space and the crafting of cities for all.
In investigating the theme of WORLDEDNESS, this chapter interrogates the ways in which our bodies and their technological extensions embed us in the shared world. Within a trend towards personalization of the devices and services of digital technologies, we use these devices and services in different ways to manifest ourselves in the world (the public sphere) before others and manage our public image and our web of connections to others. We become nodes in a broad distributed sentient cyborg sensorial network that overlays public space. Locative affordances of digital technologies link this virtual network to physical places, supporting both the commodification of location and the formation of “digital counterpublics.”
Post-Soviet cities vary dramatically yet share common elements desired by skateboarders and filmers as ‘spots’; assemblages of objects, obstacles and surfaces offering the chance to perform difficult skateboard tricks in public space. Memoryscapes are desired as spots for their scale, smooth surfaces, in-built obstacles and aesthetic appeal on video. As more skateboarders travel to post-Soviet cities in Central Asia and the Caucuses, their reinterpretation of memoryscapes reveal the ludic lives of memoryscapes, the interplay between memory and place, and the tension between hegemonic memory practices of state and state-like agents and the seemingly apolitical reinterpretation by skaters. This article explores two contrasting post-Soviet memoryscapes as seen on skate video, Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan) and Sukhumi (Abkhazia) to make three arguments. First, while battles are fought over public memory online and offline, skaters approach the landscape as ludic space; as playgrounds for unsanctioned performance, capture and circulation. Second, these memoryscapes are enrolled in global circulations of skate culture, giving memoryscapes an adjacent existence online detached from their intended meanings and counter-meanings. Third, in some cases the friction between ludic approaches and the power of memory unravels the singular focus on spots, even for skaters with limited knowledge of the context.
Pour la ville et ses acteurs, les ruines sont souvent considérées comme des problèmes à gérer. Or, les ruines à l’abandon connaissent aujourd’hui une popularité incroyable (High, 2013; Sumida, 2015). Considérant cette popularité, la présence de bâtiments et de sites fortement dégradés peut parfois représenter un potentiel de mise en tourisme. S’il s’agit d’un tourisme très marginal, il nous révèle néanmoins une perception tout à fait singulière de la ruine et de la friche. L’explorateur urbain est une figure incontournable de cette forme particulière de tourisme noir. Pour mieux comprendre sa pratique et sa perception des ruines, nous proposons de dresser un portrait exhaustif de l’exploration urbaine, tout en analysant les principales motivations des explorateurs.
The working conditions of professional skateboarders are rarely investigated in academic literature or traditional skate media (e.g., Thrasher Magazine). This article contextualizes skateboarding labor and compares its professionals with other freelance contractors in the precarious neoliberal economy. It also explores the role of social media in skateboarders’ careers; while experiencing data mining and the fetishism of digital devices like any other online user, pro skaters must adopt platforms (e.g., YouTube) for their career advancement, as greater notoriety leads to corporate sponsorships. I outline the multiple hats that skaters wear, such as the sponsored athlete, the walking advertisement, and most importantly the emerging social-media adept. Within this context, the article further details the coercive forces keeping skaters amenable to sponsoring companies and industry insiders, such as the pejorative label of “kook.” Finally, I explain a contradiction that the profusion of Web 2.0 use has led to slight but not proportional coverage of skaters’ working conditions.
This article sets out key findings of an interdisciplinary Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project that uses Long Live Southbank’s (LLSB) successful campaign to retain London’s Southbank Undercroft for subcultural use – skateboarding, BMXing, graffiti art, etc. – as a case study to generate discussions about young people’s experiences and engagements with (sub)cultural heritage and political activism. At the heart of this inquiry is the perceived contradiction between the communicative practices of subcultures and social protest movements: the former typically understood to be internally oriented and marked by strong boundary maintenance, and the latter, to be successful, to be externally oriented to a diverse range of publics. In explaining the skaters/campaigner’s negotiation of this contradiction, we look to the inclusive and everyday concepts of ‘inhabitant knowledge’ [Ingold, T., 2000. The perception of the environment: essays in livelihood, dwelling and skill. London: Routledge], ‘vernacular creativity’ [Burgess, J., 2009. Remediating vernacular creativity: photography and cultural citizenship in the Flickr photosharing network. In: T. Edensor, D. Leslie, S. Millington, and N. Rantisi, eds. Spaces of vernacular creativity: rethinking the cultural economy. London: Routledge, 116–126] and ‘affective intelligence’ [Van Zoonen, L., 2004. Imagining the fan democracy. European journal of communication, 19 (1), 39–52]. In eschewing the exclusionary and contestatory language of (post)subcultural and spatial theories, this article proposes new frameworks for thinking about the political nature of young people’s bodily knowledge and experiences, and the implications of this for the communication of (sub)cultural value.
Increasing concerns regarding congestion, pollution and health have warranted a renewed interest in cycling as alternative mobility. Yet, in revising the role of the bicycle as legitimate transportation, policy documents and academic literature have paid less attention to how cycling is different from the sensory engagement through the car, public transport, or walking. This article uses sensuous and video ethnographies of cycling in London and Lancaster (UK) to present cycling as a distinctly embodied practice. By investigating the cycling senses and how its technologies and materialities shape the mobile experience, the article contributes to the critiques of urban movement narrowly understood as utilitarian and instrumental. At a time when transition to low-carbon transport systems is critical and when automated driving futures appear imminent, this article argues for the pervasive centrality of the body in everyday urban mobilities.
This article explores the centrality of China’s cities to skate video; the most popular form for capturing, circulating, and consuming skateboarding. China’s urban growth produces endless spots to skate; a spot is assemblage of objects and surfaces that offer the opportunity to perform skateboarding maneuvers (tricks). Skate video is the substance of skate culture, the once quintessentially Californian pastime turned global subculture and industry. After skateboarding left the skatepark for the streets in the 1990s, and once video became easier to circulate digitally through streaming platforms in the mid-2000s, the search for spots to perform and capture unsanctioned street skateboarding spread to China’s urban landscapes, beginning with Shenzhen. China’s cities are sites of global desire among skateboarders for the perfect surfaces and obstacles created in the built environment and the speed at which they are produced. Using skate video as an archive I make four arguments. First, China’s cities imputed with a mythical character; endless spots produced with miraculous speed. Second, skate videos re-map China’s cities through the skater’s gaze, a form of urban knowledge both unique and widely shared. Third, the search for spots indexes urban development in China, privileging the recent and shunning the past. Fourth, skateboarding in China’s cities create spaces for inter-cultural encounter between skateboarders and authority, the public and other skateboarders. The article concludes by discussing the utility of skate video as an alternative visual archive of urban China for foreign audiences and increasingly for skate communities in China itself.
DIY skateparks figure among a widening register of informal urban interventions that confront official plans and visions of cities. They are also powerful learning environments that exemplify efforts by youth and adults alike to disrupt the fixity of neoliberalism in urban spaces. Our focus on the production of DIY skateparks offers complementary and nuanced accounts to literature on making, makerspaces, and maker culture. In this article, we seek alternative spaces of creative activity that can expand perspectives on making beyond narrow foci, like STEM. We argue that a refined focus on the minor gestures of skateboarders – evidenced through the creative potential they see in and subsequent ethic of care they show for one another and for the built environment – offers a way forward toward conceiving of making as a sociopolitical process, particularly within and beyond informal, technology-enhanced learning spaces.
This book explores extreme sports—a highly profitable business—as a novel consumption phenomenon. The behaviors of active participants in extreme sports is examined from the perspective of consumer behaviors denoted by a strong managerial relevance—for instance, determinants of intentions to repurchase, perceptions related to marketing communications centered on extreme sports, and the determinants of the intention to revisit extreme sports events. In examining such managerially relevant behaviors, this book develops a novel theoretical background based on established psychological theories about the behavior of extreme individuals (edgework theory, cognitive adaptation theory, sensation-seeking theory) to apply and translate them into the marketing-related contexts that are taken into consideration. The book adopts this perspective in an attempt to account for the impacts of the specific psychological drivers of “extreme” individuals on their consumption behavior. The present chapter delineates the aims and the scope of the book, and describes the setting of extreme sports, tracing their evolution from their origins to their emergence as a consumption phenomenon. Furthermore, the present chapter reviews the major theoretical perspectives in psychology that have addressed the psychological uniqueness of extreme sports participants.