Steve Olivier

Moral Dilemmas of Participation in Dangerous Leisure Activities

Abstract Participation in risky leisure activities (including so‐called ‘extreme’ sports) has increased in recent years, along with a concomitant growth in the related supporting industries, and in media coverage of events and associated lifestyles. The rise in popularity of dangerous leisure pursuits has led to questions about whether these activities should be regulated, or whether legislation should be enacted to prohibit particular activities. Arguments have centred on harm to individuals, and on the potential costs to others, such as families, rescue workers, and society at large. Very little work has been done on the moral legitimacy of dangerous leisure pursuits, and this paper attempts to address this, using a multidisciplinary approach. The paper evaluates both paternalistic and libertarian approaches, and pursues solutions to the moral problem from both utilitarian (consequence‐based) and deontological (duty‐based) perspectives. It is concluded that mature, rational individuals ought to retain the right to pursue activities that have potential deleterious consequences for themselves. While recognising that individuals ought to concern themselves with the effects of their actions on others, the paper accepts arguments based on autonomy, and defends the right to engage in dangerous leisure activities.

‘Your Wave, Bro!’: virtue ethics and surfing

Exclusionary and sometimes violent behaviours have historically been tacitly accepted in surfing under the banner of ‘localism’, or territorialism. In competition for an increasingly scarce resource (waves), vice is often celebrated and glorified within the subculture. Attempts at codifying acceptable behaviour have failed, not least because of an ingrained antipathy towards bureaucracy and formal organization. In rejecting the notion of surfing being able to operate in a special moral context, this paper proposes that the practice of virtue ethics holds the most likely chance of reversing moral decline. Virtuous action could operate in an exponential process, through replication and reciprocation, and might result in changing the current moral climate in which harmful acts of localism are tacitly accepted.

‘You don't understand us!’ An inside perspective on adventure climbing

This paper presents a specific (insider) perspective of a small group of experienced male Scottish adventure climbers and explores through in-depth semi-structured interviews their attitudes, strategies and justifications associated with potentially high-risk climbing situations. Attention is paid to how participants feel that they are represented and viewed by others (outsiders) who do not participate in mountaineering and climbing activities. Climbers identify the significance of media, commercial and social representations of them as risk takers. The analysis explores risk as being socially constructed, with the associated assumptions being embedded in particular discourses. Climbers present themselves as rational managers of risk and provide examples of their risk-management strategies, with such characterizations being central to their identity as climbers.

Ethical Considerations in Human Movement Research

In the past decade, ethical issues in research involving human subjects have exploded into the public consciousness. In reviewing past human subject abuse, it is evident that, in human experimentation, legislation has not been sufficient to curb excesses. Selected journal reviews indicate that informed consent is often not reported for studies where such consent is deemed appropriate. This does not necessarily mean that consent was not obtained, or that subjects were abused or exploited. It does, however, introduce the possibility that many researchers either are not cognizant of, or merely pay lip service to, the principles that form a code of ethics. Ethics in research involving human subjects is not a settled issue. Researchers ought to be aware that the principles they accept may be less conclusive, and the guidelines they apply may be less protective, than such principles and guidelines appear to be. Testing human subjects is not a right, but a privilege, and the rights of the subject ought to outwei...

Contracting the Right to Roam

In recent decades, the emergence of environmental ethics has added extra dimensions of complexity to the leisure political terrain upon which the right to roam is contested. In this chapter, two very different but influential versions of the social contract will be juxtaposed to bring the key arguments into high relief. On the one hand, Hardin’s eco-Hobbesian Tragedy of the Commons (1968/2000) thesis, and on the other, Rawls’ Kant-inspired A Theory of Justice (1971). It will be argued that Hardin’s pessimistic, exclusionary and potentially authoritarian conclusions are incompatible with the allocation of rights and duties in liberal democratic societies. Hardin should therefore be rejected in favour of an interpretative development of Rawls which designates the right to roam as a primary social good that is compatible with a conception of justice as sustainable fairness—an ideal which can be used to inform an inclusive environmentally sensitive leisure citizenship.