Becky Beal

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

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.

So you can see how the other half lives. MTV "Cribs" use of "the other" in framing successful athletic masculinities.

MTVs popular television series “Cribs” displays the homes of famous athletes and entertainers. “Cribs” presents these male athletes and their households as exemplars of “making it.” This article examines the representation of male athletes and how various types of “successful” masculinity are conflated with race and class. We found two dominant models of successful masculinity, James Bond and Cool Pose. “Cribs” clearly demarcates between Black and White athletes, which essentializes race. Simultaneously, “Cribs” presents race as performative styles providing the audience with opportunities to consume “the other.” We argue that this paradoxical dynamic is utilized to sell the cool lifestyle and has multiple implications, including depoliticizing race, class, and gender.

Maverick's: big-wave surfing and the dynamic of ‘nothing’ and ‘something’

In this piece we explore one specific big-wave company, Mavericks Surf Ventures, and how it creates and distributes a distinct lifestyle product. We draw from Ritzer, who examines the tension in late capitalist processes between increased rationalization and increased distinction, or what he refers to as the dynamic between ‘nothing’ and ‘something’. We elaborate on the dynamic by discussing Ritzer and Stillmans analysis of ‘re-enchantment’ techniques that are used to counter the negative ramifications of overly rationalized consumer spaces. Nonetheless, these new spectacular, more intimate and ‘authentic’ postmodern spaces, which re-engage the consumer, are under-girded by modern rationalization strategies to maximize profit. In this case, Mavericks Surf Ventures exemplifies the tensions in late-modern capitalist processes: it creates a distinctive and ‘authentic’ brand by drawing on the unique geographical break; it celebrates the spectacle of big-wave riding; and it uses discourses that challenge modern rationality, especially how nature provides a transcendent experience. Yet, it uses very rational and standardized means to package and distribute the event and associated products.

Beautiful losers: the symbolic exhibition and legitimization of outsider masculinity

In this paper we examine how practices and logics associated with the cultural ‘outsider’ underpin one particular fusion of contemporary art, alternative sports, and marketing interests which are endemic to post-Fordist economies. We describe a skateboarding-infused art exhibit, Beautiful Losers, to investigate how power dynamics operate relative to post-industrial creative classes. In particular, we illustrate how Beautiful Losers is one example of an emerging social field that privileges ‘outsider’ dispositions and discourses. Bourdieus concept of symbolic capital is used to describe the interested parties and the struggles for legitimacy existing within the social field. We contextualize the social significance of ‘outsider’ discourses in consumer culture and how that has gained currency within post-industrial society. We then link the idealization of the cultural ‘outsider’ with contemporary discourses associated with alternative sport and artistic disinterest. Beautiful Losers distinctly merges these logics in ways that legitimate an ascendant version of ‘outsider’ masculinity. We provide insights into how the legitimation and reproduction of this ‘outsider’ masculinity represents a symbolic struggle for capital amongst participants and audiences. Arguably, symbolic capital was primarily afforded to the white male artists and founding members who came from middle-class backgrounds.

Skateboarding, community and urban politics: shifting practices and challenges.

ABSTRACT This paper examines how skateboarding is impacted by the current neo-liberal economic and cultural climate of youth sport in the United States. Presently, youth sport is highly influenced by private entities and often packaged as a means to assuage parents that their children are gaining competitive life skills as well as character enhancing attributes. Skateboarding has typically been touted as an alternative to mainstream organised sport, due to its nonconformist, free-spirited, self-directed and creative elements. Yet, recent research suggests that skateboarding is evolving in several ways as it becomes an increasingly popular activity. Due to its popularity as one of the fastest growing participant sports new private stakeholders are leveraging this interest in order to synergistically market their brands. Simultaneously, these private stakeholders investing in skateboarding are now claiming that their contributions to skateboarding benefit the ‘public’ good in terms of health, youth and community development. This paper accordingly provides several case-study examples from skateboarding in Northern California in order to illustrate the proliferation of private–public skateboarding practises that become articulated through particular visions of the ‘public’ or ‘community’. We subsequently develop these various case studies to explicate how ascendant neo-liberal conditions within the United States strongly influence everyday practises of skateboarding. Specifically, we explore how notions of ‘community development’, ‘well-being’ and ‘healthy’ youth come to be re-framed and authorised by private interests working within seemingly public skate spaces.

Feminist Ethnographies in Sport and Leisure

This chapter intends to provide the reader with an orientation to feminist ethnographies in sport and leisure by highlighting key similarities and some significant differences in the more current theoretical strands. Although ethnographies share similar techniques for gathering information such as interviews, observations and document analysis, this is not a chapter that discusses these types of practices. Instead, the focus is on the theoretical underpinnings that shape different feminist ethnographies. Researchers who claim a feminist perspective not only focus on gender relations, but also intend to challenge power dynamics to expand women’s choices and enhance their well-being. Thus, this chapter focuses on the different ontological assumptions these theories espouse about power, the self and social change. These different theoretical assumptions impact the nature of questions asked, how information is assessed and used to make knowledge claims, and strategies for social change.

Looking back, moving forward? Reflections from early action sport researchers

This chapter acknowledges the significant contributions of early action sport scholars, and their ongoing influence on current thinking about the experiences of women as participants. With their work spanning a number of sports, Becky Beal, Douglas Booth, Jason Laurendeau, Catherine Palmer, Robert Rinehart and Belinda Wheaton, were amongst those who laid the foundations for the field, and have influenced the ideas, directions and approaches of the researchers in this book. This chapter presents a section of their reflections on the influences over their own work, it also highlights the role that author positionalities play in shaping such work, and concludes by offering some thoughts on future research directions and challenges facing action sports researchers interested in gender and women’s experiences.

‘No One Wants to Mess with an Angry Mom’: Females’ Negotiation of Power Technologies Within a Local Skateboarding Culture

Skateboarding is becoming increasingly influenced by females, both in terms of brand consumption and also participation at various levels and roles (Atencio, Beal, & Wilson, 2009). This view seems to support an emerging trend of female participation within lifestyle sporting cultures, as recently noted by Wheaton (2013). Yet, despite the seeming growth of women and girls within activities such as skateboarding, critiques surrounding the ascendancy of male power still hold purchase given our recent experience. For instance, during one visit to a skate park event held in our local community, we observed that there were no women or girls skateboarding while nearly 50 young men and boys navigated this public skate space. Another visit to a different skate park in our region revealed how only young men and boys actively used this space during a Friday night. Indeed, our third researcher, who is female, felt uncomfortable amidst the males’ activities and their conversations; she soon left. These compelling examples (and several other similar experiences) suggest that a more nuanced evaluation of women’s and girls’ participation in skateboarding is required at the micro-level of everyday practice.