The distinction of risk: urban skateboarding, street habitus and the construction of hierarchical gender relations

Abstract

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.

Gendered communities of practice and the construction of masculinities in Turkish physical education

“…These practices parallel findings found in other playground and pickup physical activity and sport contexts such as basketball and skateboarding, where young men prevailingly act as 'gatekeepers' in order to gain social authority (Atencio and Wright 2008;Kelly, Pomerantz, and Currie 2005;Wilson, White, and Fisher 2001). As noted by Atencio, Beal, and Wilson (2009), men in 'informal' physical activity contexts such as skateboarding position women as being illegitimate participants because of their supposed lack of physical ability and toughness; the young men's dominant masculinities are maintained when young women are marginalised and reduced to the peripheral role of spectators.…”

‘Like a “fish in water”’: swim club membership and the construction of the upper-middle-class family habitus

“…3. Specifically, in relation to sport, Kay and Laberge (2002) appropriated habitus to describe corporate professionals' practice of adventure racing; Wacquant (1998) examined social class, boxing and its relationship to an embodied habitus; Crossley (2004) studied how circuit training is demonstrative of an embodied habitus; Thorpe (2009) explained how habitus relates to gender and embodiment in snowboarding; Atencio, Beal, and Wilson (2009) discussed the gendered 'street habitus' of skateboarders; Fletcher (2008) linked risk sports to social class position and an escape from class habitus; Swanson (2009) applied habitus to understanding social class reproduction through youth soccer participation; and Spencer (2009) investigated the bodily techniques of the MMA fighter habitus. 4.…”

Questioning policy, youth participation and lifestyle sports

“…Lifestyle sports have been identified as an 'active battleground' for cultural significance and therefore not immune to issues such as social class, race and gender, however, whilst gender has received considerable attention (e.g. Waitt, 2008;Atencio, Beal and Wilson, 2009;Wheaton, 2009;Huybers-Withers &Livingstone, 2010) research has tended to focus on the lives of the white and the culturally affluent (Henio, 2000). Key writers in youth studies have also asserted that class is frequently ignored despite evidence to suggest that older traditional social divisions clearly underpin some of the cultural hierarchies associated with youth leisure lifestyles (MacRae, 2004;Macdonald & Shildrick, 2007;Roberts, 2011).…”