Overview

Taking us on an ethnographic journey into the spatially transgressive practice of parkour and freerunning, Parkour, Deviance and Leisure in the Late-Capitalist City: An Ethnography attempts to explain and untangle some of the contradictions that surround this popular lifestyle sport and its exclusion from our hyper-regulated cities. While the existing criminological wisdom suggests that these practices are a form of politicised resistance, this book positions parkour and freerunning as hyper-conformist to the underlying values of consumer capitalism and explains how late-capitalism has created a contradiction for itself in which it must stoke desire for these lifestyle practices whilst also excluding their free practice from central urban spaces. Drawing on the emergent deviant leisure perspective, this book takes us into the life-worlds of young people who are attempting to navigate the challenges and anxieties of early adulthood. For the young people in this study, consumer capitalism's commodification of rebellious iconography offered unique identities of 'cool individualism' and opportunities for flexibilised employment; while the post-industrial 'creative city' attempted to harness parkour's practice, prohibitively if necessary, into approved spatial contexts under the buzzwords of 'culture' and 'creativity'. This book offers a vital contribution to the criminological literature on spatial transgression, and in doing so, engages in a critical reappraisal of the evolution of the relationships between work, leisure, identity and urban space in consumer capitalism.

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9781787438125

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Reviews

Drawing on two years of participatory ethnography in the parkour scene in Newcastle, England, with members of the local parkour community and its associated professional coaching company, the author considers why parkour is excluded from urban space despite its hyper-conformity to the central values of consumer capitalism and its increasing celebration in mainstream media, advertising, and sport and lifestyle markets. He argues that this paradox is a product of late-capitalism and is a key component of capitalism's ideology and a key element in parkour's popularity, in which it appears that participants are fighting back against the system. He describes a broad theory of the changing nature of leisure and identity in late-capitalism; existing criminological and sociological theorizations of parkour and other forms of spatial transgression and their assumptions about human nature, subjectivity, and the relationship between structure and agency; the role of parkour within the pressures and realities of participants' lived experiences of consumer capitalism, particularly parkour as work and leisure; the issues of space and control and how cities attempt to create a veneer of life and the social in the dead-zone of contemporary public space, zombifying an urban ambience of living-dead; parkour's embodied practice and how participants move throughout urban space; and how parkour is policed and controlled by private security teams. -- Annotation (c)2019 * (protoview.com) * [The book offers] an effective corrective to both the academic and popular perceptions of parkour on one hand, and a powerful critique of contemporary late-capitalist society that goes far beyond the subject matter of parkour, on the other. The argument is well-crafted and convincing, the ethnography woven smoothly together with theory, while always keeping in mind the bigger picture, thus becoming far more than a mere ethnography of parkour. The book can be recommended as essential reading to scholars, students, and anyone interested in criminology, sociology and anthropology and for that matter contemporary consumer society - it makes for a good and important read. -- Tereza Kuldova

Drawing on two years of participatory ethnography in the parkour scene in Newcastle, England, with members of the local parkour community and its associated professional coaching company, the author considers why parkour is excluded from urban space despite its hyper-conformity to the central values of consumer capitalism and its increasing celebration in mainstream media, advertising, and sport and lifestyle markets. He argues that this paradox is a product of late-capitalism and is a key component of capitalism's ideology and a key element in parkour's popularity, in which it appears that participants are fighting back against the system. He describes a broad theory of the changing nature of leisure and identity in late-capitalism; existing criminological and sociological theorizations of parkour and other forms of spatial transgression and their assumptions about human nature, subjectivity, and the relationship between structure and agency; the role of parkour within the pressures and realities of participants' lived experiences of consumer capitalism, particularly parkour as work and leisure; the issues of space and control and how cities attempt to create a veneer of life and the social in the dead-zone of contemporary public space, zombifying an urban ambience of living-dead; parkour's embodied practice and how participants move throughout urban space; and how parkour is policed and controlled by private security teams. -- Annotation (c)2019 * (protoview.com) *

Drawing on two years of participatory ethnography in the parkour scene in Newcastle, England, with members of the local parkour community and its associated professional coaching company, the author considers why parkour is excluded from urban space despite its hyper-conformity to the central values of consumer capitalism and its increasing celebration in mainstream media, advertising, and sport and lifestyle markets. He argues that this paradox is a product of late-capitalism and is a key component of capitalism's ideology and a key element in parkour's popularity, in which it appears that participants are fighting back against the system. He describes a broad theory of the changing nature of leisure and identity in late-capitalism; existing criminological and sociological theorizations of parkour and other forms of spatial transgression and their assumptions about human nature, subjectivity, and the relationship between structure and agency; the role of parkour within the pressures and realities of participants' lived experiences of consumer capitalism, particularly parkour as work and leisure; the issues of space and control and how cities attempt to create a veneer of life and the social in the dead-zone of contemporary public space, zombifying an urban ambience of living-dead; parkour's embodied practice and how participants move throughout urban space; and how parkour is policed and controlled by private security teams.--Annotation (c)2019 (protoview.com)

Author Information

Thomas Raymen is Lecturer in Criminology at Plymouth University, UK. He is the co-founder of the Deviant Leisure Research Network and has published articles in peer-reviewed journals on topics including commodified leisure and social harm, crime control and urban space, and violence, consumerism and violent media. His research interests span the fields of criminology, leisure studies, moral philosophy, and cultural geography.

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