Challenging neoliberal sport: Skateboarding as a resilient cultural practice

Abstract

This paper argues that research on sporting cultures can illuminate wider debates over the power relations materialised through the fields of cultural practice. Specifically, as neoliberalism has spread across the social realm, sport has come to mirror and reinforce its logics, placing emphasis on individualised competition and ultimately contributing to the reproduction of neoliberal hegemony more generally. Within this, however, alternative movement-based practices have emerged that show resilience to this process, offering alternative futures and new ways of being that are not organised by injustice. This paper examines the case of resilience within skateboarding, a cultural practice that champions participation and community values despite its ongoing incorporation into the neoliberal sport system.

How has the media's construction of a discourse of nationalism evolved? Critical discourse analysis of Korean sports nationalism through the FIFA World Cup

“…John and McDonald (2019) illustrate how elite sports in Australia promote a neoliberal culture through government intervention. Gazeres (2022) articulates an alternative sports ecology that challenges neoliberal principles by emphasizing a counter-neoliberal approach that rejects individual competition. In this context, it can be argued that sports play a significant role in contemporary popular culture as a platform through which neoliberal ideals are embraced and accepted by the public (Andrews and Silk, 2018).…”