“Just Do It”: Consumption, Commitment, and Identity in the Windsurfing Subculture

Abstract

Debates about changing contemporary Western societies have emphasized the increasingly fluid and fragmented nature of identities, suggesting that people draw their sense of identity from increasingly diverse sources, including sport and leisure lifestyles. Drawing on ethnographic work on windsurfing subcultures, this article explores the ways in which participants create and perform (sub)cultural identities through their “new sport” consumption and its attendant lifestyle. The paper identifies the main features of the windsurfers’ status system, illustrating that demonstrating commitment, not the conspicuous display of equipment or subcultural style, is central to the meanings the windsurfers give to their participation and subcultural identity. The paper concludes by examining to what degree purported features of contemporary postmodern culture, such as a loss of self-identity, are reflected in such seemingly “image-based” new sport consumption practices.

Territorial disputes, identity conflicts, and violence in surfing

“…Unnecessarily expensive boards that are well preserved indicate that they are not frequently used and that the person does not know how to surf but wants to appear to be a surfer for its supposed appeal outside the sports universe. A similar situation was noted by Wheaton (2000) with regard to windsurfing:…”

“…Because I did not have experience with surfing, as opposed to Wheaton (2000), the participant observation strategy of analysis required learning (similar to Wacquant, 2002) how to surf. As a result, I would be able to watch and hear what surfers did and said while they waited for waves at the sea and to use my body as a source of experiential data to provide better descriptions.…”

D'une pratique à contre-temps à une activité à contre-espace. Une interprétation géographique de l'emergence du wild-boaring en Pyrénées françaises

“…Il s'agit de prendre à contrepied la marchandisation engendrée par l'intégration des activités de nature initialement conçues dans une logique alternative (Loret, 1995) au sein de l'industrie des loisirs et du tourisme de nature (Dienot & Theiller, 1992;Perrin & Mounet, 2004). Effectivement, la littérature sociologique en France ou au plan international (Lacroix, 1988;Nasser, 1996;Wheaton, 2000;Weed, 2008) montre bien comment ces activités de nature, surf, windsurf, deltaplane, parapente, escalade, rafting… sont paradoxalement devenues un secteur commercial en magazines, vêtements de mode, matériel technique ou destinations de voyage. En France, le canyoning, avec seulement 24 % de la fréquentation des sites composée de pratiquants indépendants, contre 67 % de clients d'une structure commerciale (Suchet & Jorand, 2009), repré-sente d'ailleurs l'une des activités particulièrement illustrative de ce phénomène.…”

The Gran Fondo and Sportive Experience: an Exploratory Look at Cyclists' Experiences and Professional Event Staging

“…Based on a route of 174 km, the Marmotte takes cyclists over some of the most famous cols of the Tour De France and it enables cycle tourists the chance to participate in a planned ride covering the same terrain that professional cyclists follow, and is a combination of what Gibson (2005) refers to as active sports tourism and nostalgia, combining participation with an element of vicarious adoration. Such events are reflective of a challenge culture that is not dissimilar to that discussed in the analysis of extreme and lifestyle sports where groups of individuals are undertaking more and more physically extreme activities that differentiate them from the mainstream cultural experience (Wheaton, 2000). Research on such event experiences lacks any real attempt to employ a multidisciplinary approach that considers, at the outset, the experiences to be multidimensional and multiphasic and to consequently develop a methodological mix that would give deeper meaning and insight into these variable components within has shown that experience is not static, that it is multidimensional and is always open to the effects of participants' interaction (Botterill & Crompton, 1996;Hull, Michael, Walker, & Roggenbuck 1996;Y.…”