Extreme Landscapes of Leisure

Extreme Landscapes of Leisure

Author: Patrick Laviolette

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-15

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 1317137051

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In recent years, there has been an increased engagement throughout the social sciences with the study of extreme places and practices. Dangerous games and adventure tours have shifted from being marginal, exotic or mad to being more than merely acceptable. They are now exemplary, mainstream even: there are a variety of new types, increasing numbers of people are doing them and they are being appropriated and have infiltrated more and more contexts. This book argues that hazardous sports and adventure tourism have become rather paradoxical. As a set of activities where players and holidaymakers are closer to death or danger than they would otherwise be, they are the complete opposite of normal games or vacations. Adventure sports and tours reverse the general definition of a holiday as being an escape from the seriousness of everyday life, as in most cases, they are innately serious, requiring as they do 'life or death' decision-making. Beginning with the rise in colonial explorations and moving on to consider the Dangerous Sports Club of Oxford, this book examines the increasing phenomena of adventure sports such as bungy jumping, cliff jumping or 'tomb-stoning', surfing and parkour within a framework of positive risk. It explores how certain assumptions about knowledge, agency, the body and nature are beginning to coalesce around newly developing spheres of social relations. Additionally, extreme games have become activities that are germane to the dawning of green social thought and so the book also addresses issues that deal with the intimate connections that exist between pleasure and the moral responsibility towards the environment.


Extreme Landscapes of Leisure

Extreme Landscapes of Leisure

Author: Dr Patrick Laviolette

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2012-11-28

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 1409488896

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In recent years, there has been an increased engagement throughout the social sciences with the study of extreme places and practices. Dangerous games and adventure tours have shifted from being marginal, exotic or mad to being more than merely acceptable. They are now exemplary, mainstream even: there are a variety of new types, increasing numbers of people are doing them and they are being appropriated and have infiltrated more and more contexts. This book argues that hazardous sports and adventure tourism have become rather paradoxical. As a set of activities where players and holidaymakers are closer to death or danger than they would otherwise be, they are the complete opposite of normal games or vacations. Adventure sports and tours reverse the general definition of a holiday as being an escape from the seriousness of everyday life, as in most cases, they are innately serious, requiring as they do 'life or death' decision-making. Beginning with the rise in colonial explorations and moving on to consider the Dangerous Sports Club of Oxford, this book examines the increasing phenomena of adventure sports such as bungy jumping, cliff jumping or 'tomb-stoning', surfing and parkour within a framework of positive risk. It explores how certain assumptions about knowledge, agency, the body and nature are beginning to coalesce around newly developing spheres of social relations. Additionally, extreme games have become activities that are germane to the dawning of green social thought and so the book also addresses issues that deal with the intimate connections that exist between pleasure and the moral responsibility towards the environment.


Atlantic Automobilism

Atlantic Automobilism

Author: Gijs Mom

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2014-12-01

Total Pages: 768

ISBN-13: 1782383786

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Our continued use of the combustion engine car in the 21st century, despite many rational arguments against it, makes it more and more difficult to imagine that transport has a sustainable future. Offering a sweeping transatlantic perspective, this book explains the current obsession with automobiles by delving deep into the motives of early car users. It provides a synthesis of our knowledge about the emergence and persistence of the car, using a broad range of material including novels, poems, films, and songs to unearth the desires that shaped our present “car society.” Combining social, psychological, and structural explanations, the author concludes that the ability of cars to convey transcendental experience, especially for men, explains our attachment to the vehicle.


Playgrounds And Battlefields

Playgrounds And Battlefields

Author: Francisco Martínez, Klemen Slabina, Mihhail Lotman, Siobhan Kattago, Kevin Ryan, Tom Frost, Flo Kasearu, Marcos Farias-Ferreira, Jaanika Puusalu, Dita Bezdíčková, Emeli Theander, Patrick Laviolette, Alastair Bonnett, Oleg Pachenkov and Lilia Voronkova, Anne Vatén, Helena Holgersson, Patricia García Espín and Manuel García Fernández, Benjamin Noys, Kristina Norman, Madli Maruste, Pille Runnel and Ehti Järv, Alessandro Testa, Sean Homer, Tarmo Jüristo

Publisher: Tallinn University Press

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 513

ISBN-13: 998558774X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book explores whether the metaphors of ‘playground’ and ‘battlefield’ might be analytically meaningful terms for understanding contemporary society. The duality of playgrounds and battlefields is presented as a space of continuous becoming, related to the recreation, domination and experience of a place, as well as to corresponding practices of excess, interaction and enjoyment. We believe that a discussion about engagement and responsibility in a modern social setting is possible only through new concepts that avoid binary formulations. Playgrounds and battlefields are thus used as a trigger enabling a fresh approach to a contemporaneity that is highly influenced by the way in which societies deal with their past and future. In this sense, the ‘Playgrounds and Battlefields’ volume is a thematic one, mapping the field and offering grammar of possibility.


Hitchhiking

Hitchhiking

Author: Patrick Laviolette

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-09-02

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 3030482480

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The first English-language social science book to comprehensively explore hitchhiking in the contemporary era in the West, this volume covers a lot of ground—it goes to and fro, in an echo of the modus operandi of most hitchhiking journeys. As scarification, piercings, and tattoos move from the counter-culture to popular culture, hitchhiking has remained an activity apart. Yet, with the assistance of virtual platforms and through its ever-growing memorialisation in literature and the arts, hitchhiking persists into the 21st century, despite the many social anxieties surrounding it. The themes addressed here thus include: adventure; gender; fear and trust; freedom and existential travel; road and transport infrastructures; communities of protest and resistance; civic surveillance and risk ecologies.


The Cultural Politics of Lifestyle Sports

The Cultural Politics of Lifestyle Sports

Author: Belinda Wheaton

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-07-23

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1134020481

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Drawing on a series of in-depth, empirical case-studies, this book offers a re-evaluation of theoretical frameworks with which lifestyle sports have been understood, and focuses on aspects of their cultural politics that have received little attention, particularly the racialization of lifestyle sporting spaces. Casting new light on the significance of sport and sporting subcultures within contemporary society, this book is essential reading for students or researcher working in the sociology of sport, leisure studies or cultural studies.


Nature Sports

Nature Sports

Author: Ricardo Melo

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-11-07

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 1000997219

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book represents the first international collection that challenges current thinking and research in the emerging field of nature sport. Owing to its inherent connections with fields such as business, leisure, health, tourism, and education, this emerging field has attracted perspectives from a wide range of theoretical viewpoints – much of which are discussed within this collection. In simple terms nature sports refer to a group of sporting activities that predominantly take place in natural and rural areas. Participation can be both competitive and recreational, with the primary aim to work in relation to nature, where participants seek harmony rather than the quest to conquer it. Within this book, experts from around the globe consider the very essence of nature sport(s), including numerous practical examples of it in action, offering invaluable insights to those both familiar and new to the field. Driven by an increase in non-traditional sports, coupled with growing concerns about the environment, nature sports have experienced significant expansion and interest in both participation and academic debate. This book is a valuable resource for students and academics in fields such as alternative sports, alternative sport subcultures, sport philosophy, sport and social issues, ethics, and phenomenology. It is also a fascinating read for outdoor educators and practitioners. The chapters in this book were originally published as special issues in Annals of Leisure Research.


Ethnologia Europaea Vol. 42:1

Ethnologia Europaea Vol. 42:1

Author: Orvar Löfgren

Publisher: Museum Tusculanum Press

Published: 2012-10-29

Total Pages: 84

ISBN-13: 8763537478

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

How did an African elephant reach a North European museum? What makes fashion displayed in museums such a hot topic today? Two of the articles in this issue of Ethnologia Europaea deal with museum ideologies. Liv Emma Thorsen’s essay follows the story of a museum elephant. What lessons can be drawn from its death, transport and exhibition in a postcolonial world? Marie Riegels Melchior looks at the intersection of the fashion industry and nation branding as an arena for developing new museums. These two articles tie in with Alexandra Schwell’s reflections on ideological shifts in Austrian state officials’ concept of the nation’s place on the political landscape, past and present. Patrick Laviolette explores metaphors of emplacement to understand regional character through its linguistic idiom. Relying on extensive fieldwork, Vihra Barova employs classical kinship scholarship to understand present-day Bulgarian village ties as they are expressed in the festivities of extended families.


Tourist Experiences

Tourist Experiences

Author: Chris Ryan

Publisher: Channel View Publications

Published: 2024-03-12

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 184541926X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book explores the application of psychological theories to tourist behaviour and experiences. It traces the evolution of those theories and how they have changed in response to broader social and economic changes. Among those changes have been the development of tourism, which reflects those social changes and contributes to them. In doing so, tourism theories also contribute to and gain insights from emergent psychological theories including those derived from the neurosciences. The book provides both undergraduate and postgraduate students with an understanding of core psychological perspectives derived from both humanistic and empirical psychology and their application to tourist behaviours and experiences.


Exploring the Natural Underground

Exploring the Natural Underground

Author: Kevin Bingham

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-06-07

Total Pages: 174

ISBN-13: 1000893936

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book explores the enigmatic world of the natural underground, viewing it as a site of leisure and a primary sphere of anthropotechnics. It reshapes the old language of caving into new ideas that broaden the possibilities of the sociology of caving. After outlining a novel methodological approach that can be used to understand new leisure trends and cultures in present modernity, Exploring the Natural Underground offers a comprehensive investigation of the societal context in which caving takes place. Thereafter it goes on to argue that the natural underground can be used as a means of escaping some of the unavoidable influences of consumer capitalism in the way that it stimulates imaginations, senses and emotions differently. Marking a turning point in the way that the natural underground is understood, and the degree to which sensory dimensions of leisure are valued, this book will appeal to anybody interested in caving, as well as scholars and students of leisure studies, the sociology of leisure, the ethnography of leisure, and human geography.