Introduction
Victoria Robinson
The social significance of sport at both local and global levels has become apparent
through theoretical concern with sporting identities. (See. for example: Messner and
Sabo, 1990; MacClancy, 1996; Coakly and Donnelly, 1999; Mckay, Messner and Sabo,
2000.) More recently, an interest in extreme sports has also been put on the sporting
theoretical agenda. Lifestyle or extreme sports can be defined as individualistic. However,
they also offer a collectivity to its participants which extends outside of the sporting
activity itself, to embrace fashion, music, and other lifestyle choices. Participants are
often western, white, and middle class and many have an anti- mainstream philosophy
which encompasses a. desire not to embrace commercialism, as more traditional sports,
such as football have done. Though ironically extreme sports are now, of course, big
business.
On a global level, Maguire (1999) argues that the West has been attracted to
‘non-achievement’ sports activities such as martial arts or extreme sports. He sees the
existence of extreme sports as a challenge to the dominant achievement sports ideology
as evidence of the fact that global processes are characterised by diversity, not the
replication of uniformity. A fundamental way in which this ‘diversity’ has been both
theorised and empirically investigated is through a consideration of sporting gendered
identities as well as gender relations. Wheaton (2004) states that: ‘the central question
lifestyle sports researchers have sought to answer is whether these newer non-traditional
sports, offer different and potentially more transformatory scripts for male and female
physicality, than the hegemonic masculinities and femininities characteristic of traditional
sports cultures and identities’ (2004: 16, emphasis in original).
However, though increasing, there are still relatively few detailed and grounded
studies available which explore from the viewpoint of the everyday experience of
participants, the specific culture of extreme sports. Rock climbing, for instance, has not
been analysed in any major and sustained way. Though there is some theoretical work
1
on climbing (for example, Donnelly and Young, 1999; Lewis, 2000, 2004; Kiwewa, 2001;
Donnelly, 2003; Dornian, 2003; and Robinson, 2004), the sport has so far received little
sustained critical attention as opposed to other extreme or ’risk‘ sports such as
skateboarding.
The contributors to this special edition are all concerned with diverse issues of
gender in the context of the extreme sport of rock climbing. All are women, all climb,
either in the UK or the US, and all have recently been postgraduate students. It is from
this location that their concerns with sporting gender identities, gender relations and
gendered everyday experiences emerge.
Dilley’s article on women’s climbing physicalities is situated in the theoretical
contexts of sociology, cultural and gender studies. She is concerned with female climbing
bodies and how they relate to gender, identity, subjectivity and power. As well as
critically analysing theories of the body, in relation to the ideas of Grosz, Bardo, Bartky
and Butler, she uses semi-structured interviews with UK female climbers to explore issues
of embodiment, identity and the meaning of femininity and masculinity as lived, sporting
experiences.
Her plea for theory to be informed by the material is taken up in Plate’s work on
the need to include the everyday views of sporting participants in any analysis of a
sporting sub culture, here in a US context. Her highly personal introduction to the article
reveals a stress on the need to investigate ‘climbers’ passions, motivations and their
relationship to the sport’. Her theoretical concern is in problematising the concept of
gender in an attempt to analyse gender dynamics in the climbing community. Her ideas
also have wider implications for feminist theory. As she notes, though work on sporting
masculinities is emerging (Robinson, 2004, 2008 and Wheaton, 2004), the deconstruction
of ‘femininity’ in sporting cultures has received relatively little attention.
Lastly, Summer’s work is not based on empirical data, but utilises the media and
recent climbing literature to explore representations of the gendered implications of
women and men who are mothers and fathers, and who ‘climb mountains’. Incorporating
historical and contemporary climbing literature as evidence, she reveals alternative and
rich sources that are available to academics, outside of the refereed journal article.
2
All the articles contributes to the study of everyday cultures by considering
climbers as reflexive actors involved in the creation of diverse, fluid and contradictory
identities. As suggested by Gardiner (2000), the everyday is not an undifferentiated and
homogeneous set of practices, attitudes and cognitive structures. Therefore, a central
assumption that links these articles is that sport is a site of both struggle and resistance
in relation to gender, so that any shifts identified in sporting gendered relations and
identities are seen in the continuing context of gendered and other power relations. What
also emerges from these writings is the need to consider sport itself in a wider context
than is usually the case. Our everyday relationships to others as parents, partners and
friends should inform any theoretical sporting agenda, and is as important a
consideration as what goes on at the rock face or the beach, or the city street. Only in
this way can we adequately conceptualise the relationship of the extreme with the
everyday, and in so doing, problematise this dichotomy between the extraordinary and
the mundane.
References
Coakley, J. and Donnelly, P. (eds) (1999) Inside Sports, London; Routledge.
Donnelly, P. (2003) ‘Sports Climbing vs. Adventure Climbing’, in R.E. Rinehart and S.
Sydnor (eds) To the Extreme: Alternative Sports, Inside and Out, Albany; SUNYP.
Donnelly, P. and Young, K. (1999) ‘Rock climbers and rugby players: identity construction
and confirmation’, in J.Coakly and P. Donnelly (eds) Inside Sports, London/New
York; Routledge.
Dornian, D. (2003) ‘Xtreem’, in R.E. Rinehart and S. Sydnor (eds) To the Extreme:
Alternative Sports, Inside and Out, Albany; SUNYP.
Gardiner, M. E. (2000) Critiques of Everyday Life, London, Routledge.
Kiewa, J. (2001) ‘ “Stepping Around Things”: Gender Relationships in Climbing’,
Australian Journal of Outdoor Education, vol. 5, no. 2: 4-12.
Lewis, N. (2000) ‘The Climbing Body, Nature and the Experience of Modernity’, Body and
Society, vol. 6, nos. 3-4: 58-80.
Lewis, N. (2004) ‘Sustainable Adventure: Embodied Experiences and Ecological
3
Practices within British Climbing’, in B. Wheaton (ed.) Understanding Lifestyle
Sports: Consumption, Identity and Difference, London: Routledge.
MacClancy, J. (1996) Sport, Identity and Ethnicity, Oxford: Berg.
Maguire, J. (1999) Global Sport: Identities, Societies, Civilizations, Cambridge: Polity.
McKay, J., Messner, M. and Sabo, D. (eds.) (2000) Masculinities, Gender Relations and
Sport, London: Sage.
Messner, M. and Sabo, D. (eds) (1990) Sport, Men and the Gender Order, Champaign,
US: Human Kinetics Publishers.
Rinehart, R.E. and Sydnor, S. (eds) (2003) To the Extreme: Alternative Sports, Inside
and Out, Albany: SUNYP.
Robinson, V. (2004) ‘Taking Risks: Identity, Masculinities, and Rock Climbing’, in B.
Wheaton (ed.) Understanding Lifestyle Sports: Consumption, Identity and
Difference, London: Routledge.
Robinson, V. (2008) A Different Kind of Hard: Masculinities, The Everyday and Rock
Climbing, Oxford: Berg.
Wheaton, B. (ed.) (2004) Understanding Lifestyle Sports: Consumption, Identity
and Difference, London: Routledge.
4