The cultural politics of lifestyle sports

Abstract

This important new study examines the changing place and meaning of lifestyle sports – parkour, surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding, and others – and asks whether they continue to pose a challenge to the meaning and experience of ‘sport’, physical culture and identity in the twenty-first century. The book offers a critique of the main theoretical frameworks with which lifestyle sports are usually understood, including the concepts of ‘subculture’, ‘neo-tribe’, ‘symbolic community’ and ‘serious leisure’. Drawing on a series of in-depth, empirical case-studies, it explores a range of key contemporary themes in lifestyle sport, such as: •sport scapes, media discourse and lived reality •age, risk and responsibility •nature and environmentalism •governance and regulation •identity and the politics of difference •commercialization and globalization. Casting new light on the significance of sport and sporting subcultures within contemporary society, this book is essential reading for any student or researcher working in the sociology of sport or cultural studies.