Seduced but not wholly abandoned is one way to describe “edgework,” a word for risky behavior coined by the gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson but made sociological by Stephen Lyng. Using the term in his 1990 study of sky divers, Mr. Lyng explored the seduction of extreme sports and other activities in which people voluntarily risk their lives. He found that beyond the adrenaline rush that he and fellow sky divers experienced were the equally addictive pleasures of control, skill, and self-determination. He then linked the appeal of edgework to a rebellion against the deadening and constraining institutions of modern society, drawing on Marx’s concept of “alienation” and George Herbert Mead’s idea of “oversocialization.”
Today Mr. Lyng, a professor at Carthage College, journeys past Marx and Mead in Edgework: The Sociology of Risk-Taking (Routledge). As editor, he joins 13 other scholars as they explore edgeworking not only in the sense of resistance but also as action applauded in an increasingly risky society.
While certain of the scholars have never needed protective padding, one, Jeff Ferrell, has been a risk-taker likeand, indeed, withMr. Lyng. Mr. Ferrell recalls their grad-student days racing motorcycles and reading the revolutionary Bakunin. It was then, he says, that he began to see parallels between edgework and anarchism, especially in the misconceptions that have plagued both, he argues. Critics, Mr. Ferrell says, have missed the dialectic between artistry and abandon: “You stretch your luck, but stretch it just right.”
Not anarchic, but still an edgy practitioner, Jennifer Lois examines gender in edgework by contrasting how men and women on a Rocky Mountain rescue team manage their emotions in dangerous and gruesome situations. Also outdoors are Lori Holyfield, Lillian Jonas, and Anna Zajicek, who discuss the commodification of edgework when whitewater-rafting guides on the Chattooga River tame danger for the “package adventurer.”
After essays on other outdoor and indoor edgework, including stock trading and recreational drug use, the book ends in academe, with Gideon Sjoberg using a half-century at the University of Texas at Austin to consider how intellectual risk-taking is either supported or discouraged by organizations. Mark S. Hamm then takes a similar tack. The methods and dangers of his edgework research on neo-Nazis, militia groups, and the like are woven into his version of professional battles at Indiana State University. As he quotes a fellow criminologist: “The skinheads may have tried to break your legs, but your colleagues tried to destroy your career.”
http://chronicle.com Section: Research & Publishing Volume 51, Issue 16, Page A17
