1st Edition
Lifestyle Sports and Identities Subcultural Careers Through the Life Course
This book examines how different stages of adult life affect participation in lifestyle sports and in the construction of identity. Drawing on multi-disciplinary perspectives, it explores how gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and location, in conjunction with age and stage in career, affect lifestyle sport practices and meanings.
Tracing engagement with lifestyle sport across the lifecourse, from young adult to older age, the book examines the concepts of authenticity and identity in subcultural and alternative sports, exploring how individuals develop lifestyle sport identities, maintain authentic identities, and how they manage those identities as older adults. It presents a range of fascinating, cutting-edge case studies from around the world, covering sports as diverse as climbing, surfing, mountain biking, skateboarding and roller derby, and considers key contemporary issues such as professionalisation, sports labor, and digital technology. It also highlights political tensions and shifts that shape the identities of lifestyle sport communities.
This is essential reading for anybody with a serious interest in alternative or lifestyle sports, the relationships between sport and wider society, or the development of subcultures and cultural identity.
Introduction
Tyler Dupont and Becky Beal
Part 1: Entering a Career and Forging a Place in the Activity During Midlife
1 Becoming a Mountain Biker
Karen McCormack
2 The Construction of Place Identity via "Shua jie" in Public Spaces of Guangzhou, China
Minhui Lin
3 The Objectification of Self in Material Culture: Identity Anchors in Jeep Culture
Michael S. Rosenbaum
4 Gender and Climbing Style: "Dynos" and "Heel Hooks" in the Gym
Jennifer Wigglesworth
5 Maneuvering Microaggressions and Contesting Cultural Beliefs: An Intersectional Examination of Mexican American Surfers Experiences in Southern California Surf Culture
Cassie Comley
6 Constructing Queer-Skater Identities: Failure and Futurity
Bethany Geckle and Sally Shaw
Part 2: Maintaining a Career During Midlife
7 Identity and Wellbeing in Older Skateboarders
Paul O’Connor
8 The Working Lives of Professional Rock Climbers: An Ethnographic Exploration of Multilayered Labor
Guillaume Dumont
9 Big Wave Surfing: Fun, Group Cohesion, and Group Identity
Ugo Corte
10 BMX in China: Subculture Identity, Family, Career
Yiyin Ding
11 BMX Freestyle Cycling and Identity
Wade Nelson
Part 3: Negotiating Careers as Older Adults
12 Ageing and Nature-based Sport: Sensing, Experiencing and Becoming
Barbara Humberstone
13 Seniors, Lifestyle, and Hobbyist Sport
Robert A. Stebbins
14 Lifestyle Sport Identity and National Identity: Thoughts on the Chinese Government’s (re)Creation of Dama Image
Ho Hon Leung
15 Gra(c)(t)efully Ageing in Late Capitalist Sport: Coping with the Inevitable in Action Pursuits
Robert E. Rinehart
Part 4: Shifts in the Fields
16 Conventional Culture, Subcultural Institutions and Subcultural Careers as Backdrops to Identity Work in Singapore's Esports Scene
J. Patrick Williams and Victoria Puay Ru Chua
17 Skateboarding in the Iron Cage: An Exploratory Examination of Professional Skate Identities in Street League Skateboarding
Tyler Dupont and L. Dugan Nichols
18 From Spectacle to Sport: Shifting Authenticity within Modern Roller Derby
Amanda Draft
19 Transforming Gender Identity through Breaking
Tonje Fjogstad Langnes
20 Understanding Race in Skateboarding: A Retrospection and Agenda for the Importance of Being Seen
Neftalie Williams
Biography
Tyler Dupont is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York, Oneonta, USA.
Becky Beal is Professor of Kinesiology at California State University, East Bay, USA.
"In our opinion, the book can be considered as essential reading, both for scholars interested in topics, such as youth sports, alternative sports, sports policy disputes, and the sociology of sport in general and for practitioners (athletes and exercisers) engaging in lifestyle sports. It is definitively a book worth looking into, either to inform your understanding of the deeper meaning of doing lifestyle sports, or just for an inspirational read, or, as in our case; both. Against this backdrop, we have no doubts about recommending this book." - Frida Wågan and Mads Skauge, Nord University, European Journal for Sport and Society
"Dupont (State University of New York, Oneonta) and Beal (California State University, East Bay) have edited a volume that explores an important, understudied area of sport and leisure. Twenty different chapters address guiding questions about how sport identities and participation change over time in "lifestyle" sports ... The first section of the book on career and activity in midlife is particularly strong, and the section about making a career of one's alternative sport offers intriguing perspectives. This anthology begins to answer some key questions about the aging sporting population and encourages further research. Summing Up: Highly recommended." – S. K. Fields, University of Colorado Denver, CHOICE
