SPATIAL RESISTANCE OF ALTERNATIVE SPORTS

Anni RannikkoUniversity of Eastern FinlandDepartment of Social Sciences

Nordic Sociological Association14th of August 2014, Lund, Sweden

PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS ON

What kind of meanings alternative sports practitioners give to their actions of taking over public space?

What kind of power relations are visible in these actions?

Alternative sports in this analysis: skateboarding, inline skating, freestyle scootering, parkour, contemporary circus and longboarding

Maria Hopponen

BACKGROUNDAlternative sports

Free and creative in terms of style, space and time Question our understanding of spaces of sport Are created through inventing and taking over new

spaces of sports ‘creative street phase’

Space, power and resistance Space is power societal hierarchies became visible in

space (Lefebvre, Massey) Public space is monopolised by adults (Sibley) Uncontrolled and spontaneous 4th space: youth at/as risk Unconventional movement is a way to take over public

space

RESEARCH MATERIAL

Ethnographic interviews of young people practising alternative sports

Open-ended questions of an online survey targeting young people practising alternative sports (n = 557)

SPATIAL RESISTANCE

Starting point: idea of shared action spaces conventional ways of using public space are considered to be valued higher than the usage of public space for youth sports

Respectful and negotiating resistance Momentary and testing resistance

I think it’s perfectly ok to skateboard in public spaces as long as you don’t cause any damage to the surrounding or people. Skateboarding in yards is also ok, if you respect people living there and their property. In these kind of situations you might need to talk with those people, and if for instance the noise of skateboarding bothers them, then it’s often better for you to leave. On the other hand, yards are often environments where you find things you can’t find elsewhere, so at least I myself try to make people understand that. (A 23-year-old skateboarder.)

CONCLUSIONS Public space is occupied unremarked and

momentarily Hierarchies between youth and adulthood as well as

different alternative sports are negotiated by being present in, by using and by talking about public space

Alternative sports practitioners stress negotiating and conciliatory actions and distance themselves from conflict and explicitly articulated resistance against adult’s spatial power

Conventions and hierarchies are challenged and redefined through space and its use

Spatial resistance of alternative sports is to a large extent silent resistance, which is connected with hierarchies of youth and adulthood.