International Review for the
Sociology of Sport
2015, Vol. 50(4-5) 634­–639
© The Author(s) 2014
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1012690214539160
irs.sagepub.com
Assessing the sociology of
sport: On action sport and
the politics of identity
Belinda Wheaton
University of Brighton, UK
Abstract
On the 50th anniversary of the ISSA and IRSS, Belinda Wheaton, a key figure in understanding
emerging, high-risk, and lifestyle sports and their cultures, assesses developments in the sociology
of sport that concern the politics of identity and action sport. In reflecting on the trajectory
of inquiry, Wheaton notes the struggles of scholars to determine what constitutes sport and
reflects on the ways in which action sport both challenges and reproduces dominant relations and
meanings. Because many forms of action and informal sport continue to grow rapidly and outpace
the expansion of many traditional sports in many Western nations, they represent an important
lens for understanding sport in contemporary settings because they are characterized by boundarycrossing
activities that traverse sport and art, play and games. Key challenges for the field include
understanding the paradoxes that come with commercialization and professionalization as well as
understanding how emergent sport subcultures may evolve in non-Western settings. Key on the
agenda for the future will be a need for scholars to continue to expose the political formations
and to link identity politics in emergent sport to broader structural forces to better understand
power and inequality.
Keywords
action sport, cultural politics, identity, lifestyle sport, subculture, youth sport
Introduction: ‘that’s not sport!’
Debate about what sport is, and how it can be differentiated from play, leisure and
games, is a question that has engaged sport philosophers for decades and continues to
drive debate in introduction to ‘sport’ classes. Yet for most sociologists of sport, this
problem is a fleeting one; their focus has tended to be on elite or competitive sporting
organizations, cultures, events and industries. These are important concerns, but they
Corresponding author:
Belinda Wheaton, School of Sport and Service Management, University of Brighton, Hillbrow Denton Road,
Eastbourne BN20 7SR, Sussex, England.
Email: B.wheaton@Brighton.ac.uk
539160IRS0010.1177/1012690214539160International Review for the Sociology of SportWheaton
research-article2014
ISSA and IRSS 50th Anniversary Article
Wheaton	 635
only represent one part of the sporting landscape. In this essay I conceptualize sport as
a multifaceted, boundary-crossing activity (Atkinson, 2010) that does not need to
involve competitive activity, rules or institutions. I argue that informal non-competitive
sporting activities have long-been and remain a central part of the sporting landscape.
My focus is on action and lifestyle sports and their increasing centrality to the global
sports-scape in the 21st century, as participatory experience, as mediated event and as
part of the global and local sport industry. I argue that this intensifying trend presents a
conceptual and empirical challenge for a sociology of sport rooted in traditional understanding
of what sport is; and simultaneously present opportunities to think about what
a less-competitive, more inclusive, ethical, environmentally-aware, cosmopolitan sport
culture could be.
Reflections on the trajectory of action-sport in the 21st
century: challenging and reproducing the dominant?
Since their emergence in the 1960s, action sports such as skateboarding have experienced
unprecedented growth both in participation and in their increased visibility.
Evolving in a unique historical conjuncture of global communication, corporate sponsorship,
entertainment industries, and a growing global young, affluent demographic, action
sports have spread around the world far faster than most established sports (Thorpe and
Wheaton, 2011). Driven by a multi-million-dollar industry selling commodities and lifestyles
to ‘hard-core’ aficionados and grazers alike, action sports have an importance that
‘far transcends’ the relatively few numbers of dedicated active participants (Booth and
Thorpe, 2007: ix).
The allure and excitement of action sport has been appropriated to sell every kind of
product, service and experience imaginable. The media’s appetite for such sports is
exemplified by the success of ESPN’s X-Games which, by 2003, less than 10 years after
its inauguration (1995), had commanded a global audience of 50 million (Thorpe and
Wheaton, 2011). Conversely, during this time period, the youth audience for the Olympics
was steadily declining (Thorpe and Wheaton, 2011), and television contracts for the Big
3 – football, baseball and basketball – lost the North American networks billions of dollars
(Booth and Thorpe, 2007: 190). The emergence and increasing media support for
action sports in the Olympic Games (e.g. snowboarding, BMX, windsurfing, mountain
biking), is testament to their continued appeal to youth audiences and ability to adapt
across boundaries from ‘lifestyle’ to achievement sport. The star performers such as
Tony Hawk (skateboarder), Shaun White (snowboarder), Kelly Slater and Lisa Anderson
(surfers) have, like other global sport celebrities, transcended their subcultures to inhabit
trans/national space.
Accompanying this rapid expansion has been cultural fragmentation, with enthusiasts
engaging in a wide variety of participation styles which, in the (post-Fordist) capitalist
economy, support new and profitable niche markets (Thorpe and Wheaton, 2011). Thus,
the ways in which consumers can experience action sports are ever-diversifying, simultaneously
being promoted to previously peripheral audiences. The surfing ‘experience’,
characterized by youthful white masculinity, is being marketed to an expanding range of
636	 International Review for the Sociology of Sport 50(4-5)
niche groups such as ‘tween’ girls (Roxy’s latest target), silver surfers (retirees with
income), and ‘burkinis’ for Muslim surfer–girls (Comer, 2010). The commercial possibilities
of the surfing experience include indoor surf domes, surf reefs, and wave pools
as ‘on-board’ entertainment on luxury cruise ships. As Van Bottenburg and Salome
(2010) suggest, activities characterized as self-directed, conducted in ‘nature’, are
increasingly being repackaged as more structured indoor leisure experiences.
Assessing the challenges for the sociology of sport
In the 21st century action sports are thus attracting a still-growing and diversifying body
of male and female consumers and participants, from increasingly diverse global geographical
settings, including parts of Africa, Asia and South America (see Booth and
Thorpe, 2007; Comer, 2010). The lack of formal organizations and the outdoor nomadic
nature of these activities makes it hard to measure participation accurately. However the
available sources (such as sales of equipment, market research, participation surveys and
media commentaries) confirm that involvement in many types of action and informal
sports continues to grow rapidly, outpacing the expansion of many traditional sports in
many Western nations (see e.g. Gilchrist and Wheaton, 2011; Howell, 2008).
Action sport cultures therefore provide an important lens to understanding the empirical
and theoretical trajectories and challenges of ‘sport’in the 21st century. These boundary-crossing
activities that traverse sport and art, play and games (Atkinson, 2010)
provide interesting and useful cultural forms and spaces to map the ways in which sport
cultures, experiences and identities are shifting in the transition from modernity to postmodernity.
Are these sport sites where traditional sporting identities, discourses and
forms of embodiment, are reproduced, or challenged? Do these ‘reflexive life projects’,
forms of identity management and lifestyles surrounding these cultures ‘hold potentially
emancipatory potential’ (Carrington, 2007: 51) confronting what sport is, or could be?
Mapping some of the most fruitful directions of contemporary research, it is evident
that action sport research across different sports, contexts and geographic locales has
proliferated over the past decade (see debate in Thorpe and Wheaton, 2013). The paradoxes
and continued challenges via commercialization and professionalization remain
a focus. More innovative and productive theoretical lenses have been adopted, particularly
around the spatial and affective dimensions of these sporting subjectivities and
spaces.1 But, reflecting the sociology of sport more broadly, research exploring intersectionality,
‘the multiply–constitutive character of axes of power, inequality and identity
on a global scale’ (Carrington, 2007: 55), is more limited. Revealing the racialized
spaces of lifestyle sports, and the articulations of race with gender, sexuality, age and
class, historically, temporally and as it registers and resides in space, remains a key
challenge in understanding their cultural politics, particularly in the expanding hubs
outside the Global North (Wheaton, 2013). For example, action sports have been heralded
as providing a challenge to traditional ways of doing and seeing sport; yet many
have remained or even become the playgrounds of affluent western white men (Kusz,
2004). What are minority participants’experiences of belonging and exclusion; how are
sporting identities, discourses and forms of embodiment reproduced and challenged?
Wheaton	 637
The rampant commercialization and mainstream incorporation of action sport cultures
has, in some contexts, also led to more sexist, and homophobic cultures.
Concurrently, and somewhat paradoxically, participants believe their cultures embrace
ways of living that are different to – and better (more inclusive, environmentally-aware,
cosmopolitan, ethical) –than those of the (North American) mainstream. For example
surfers have been at the forefront of environmental campaigns for cleaner seas and groups
such as the Black Surfing Association are actively working to create spaces and opportunities
for minority ethnic participants (see Wheaton, 2013). In some contexts action sports
do have the potential to include participants from a range of different backgrounds, including
the least privileged. Activities such as skateboarding, parkour and surfing are being
targeted by an increasingly wide range of agencies and stakeholders because of their perceived
value as a way to address a range of social ‘issues’ and ‘problems’ from social
inclusion to health (e.g. Gilchrist and Wheaton, 2011). Emerging research and media
reports have highlighted a growing number of action sports for development and peace
[SDP] initiatives in the Global South (e.g. ‘Skatistan’ in Afganistan, and ‘Skateboarding
for Hope’ in South Africa).
Future directions for the sociology of sport: action sport
and the politics of identity
To explore these issues I have advocated an approach that is contextually grounded;
conceptualizes their cultures, economies and representations within the broader popular
cultural leisure landscape; centralizes power relations; and adopts methodological reflexivity
and theoretical eclecticism (Sugden and Tomlinson, 2002). My particular version of
this approach (Wheaton, 2013) attempted to adopt an intersectional approach to cultural
identity, consider how identity is constructed, marked and performed; attend to the myriad
ways in which difference and exclusion is manifest (e.g. materially, discursively,
spatially); and explore how cultural power is both reproduced and contested.
However, identity remains a contested and confused term, often seen to be divorced
from, or a barrier to challenging wider forms of social inequality (Carrington, 2007).
Drawing on the genealogy of identity and identity politics within cultural studies,
Carrington (2007: 49) challenges this view, illustrating that identity can also be seen as a
site for self-actualization and political struggle, as a ‘precondition’ for the development
of an ‘effective oppositional politics’ (2007: 50). Centring questions of cultural identity
helps expose ‘the complex articulations of dominant ideologies’ in action sport cultures
while also acknowledging the ‘pleasure, creativity and instances’ of resistance and occasionally,
transformation that sport can provide (Carrington, 2007).
The challenge for theorists then is not only to continue to expose the political potential
of these subcultural formations but also to link identity politics to broader structural
forces, exposing power and inequality both within and between these formations. As
such, the ways in which particular discourses about action sports dovetail with ideologies
of the neoliberal consumer can be exemplified, thus fashioning self-reliant, self-monitoring,
individualistic and flexible consumers (Howell, 2008). However, while action sports are
being mobilized by a range of agencies, the process is not without contestation and, concurrently,
individual and collective experiences of identity are also shifting. Research
638	 International Review for the Sociology of Sport 50(4-5)
needs to tease out how particular discourses are made meaningful by people, and reveal
who is included and excluded discursively, materially and spatially.
In summary, we need to consider if action sports can be more than a metaphor for
Western affluent white hetero-normative sporting cultures and spaces (Jarvie, 2006).
Research that reveals and provides a platform for some of the hidden, subordinate voices
and experiences – such as African American surfers in California, Zulu skateboarders
and surfers in South Africa (Wheaton, 2013), lesbian surfers in Cornwall (Roy, 2014),
parkour participants in Gaza (Thorpe and Ahmad, 2013) and Skirtboarders inhabiting
on-line spaces (Mackay and Dallaire, 2013) – is a starting point. Certainly participant-led
organisations like Surfers against Sewage, Stakistan, and the Black Surfing Association
provide compelling examples of the politically emancipatory elements within action
sports cultures, illustrating how in these informal sporting spaces, cultural identity can be
a foundation for developing, and articulating a critical consciousness that goes beyond
the sporting sphere (Carrington, 2010). But we must also expose the complex and contradictory
articulations of race, gender, sexuality, class, nationhood, dis/ability in these
informal but increasingly globally widespread spaces and settings in which action sports
take place. Only then can our research contribute to exposing the political possibility of
‘sport’, leisure and physical culture, and its potential to both establish and challenge
social order.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or
not-for-profit sectors.
Note
1.	 Space precludes a discussion of this research, but see especially Evers, Roy, Olive, Waitt
(surfing), McKay, Chiver-Yochim, Atencio & Beal (skateboarding) Pavidis (roller derby);
Kidder (parkour); Thorpe (snowboarding).
References
Atkinson M (2010) Entering Scapeland: Yoga, fell and post-sport physical cultures. Sport in
Society: Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics 13(7): 193–211.
Booth D and Thorpe H (2007) International Encyclopedia of Extreme Sport. Great Barrington:
Berkshire Reference Works.
Carrington B (2007) Merely identity: Cultural identity and the politics of sport. Sociology of Sport
Journal 24(1): 49–66.
Carrington B (2010) Race, Sport and Politics: The Sporting Black Diaspora. London: SAGE.
Comer K (2010) Surfer Girls in the New World Order. Durham, NC and London: Duke University
Press.
Gilchrist P and Wheaton B (2011) Lifestyle sport, public policy and youth engagement: Examining
the emergence of parkour. International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics 3(1): 109–131.
Howell O (2008) Skateparks as neoliberal playground. Space and Culture 11(4): 475–496.
Jarvie G (2006) Sport, Culture and Society: An Introduction. London: Routledge.
Kusz K (2004) ‘Extreme America’: The cultural politics of extreme sports in 1990s America.
In: Wheaton B (ed.) Understanding Lifestyle Sports: Consumption, Identity and Difference.
London: Routledge, pp. 197–213 .
Wheaton	 639
Mackay S and Dallaire C (2013) Skirtboarder net-a-narratives: Young women creating their
own skateboarding (re)presentations. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 48(2):
171–195.
Roy G (2014) Feminism in new sporting spaces: Gender, subjectivity and the female surfer in
Britain. PhD Thesis, University of Brighton, Brighton.
Sugden J and Tomlinson A (2002) Theory and method for a critical sociology of sport. In: Sugden
J and Tomlinson (eds) Power Games: Theory and Method for a Critical Sociology of Sport.
London: Routledge, pp. 3–21.
Thorpe H and Ahmad N (2013) Youth, action sports and political agency in the Middle East:
Lessons from a grassroots parkour group in Gaza. International Review for the Sociology of
Sport. Epub ahead of print 18 June. DOI: 10.1177/1012690213490521.
Thorpe H and Wheaton B (2011) ‘Generation X Games’, action sports and the Olympic movement:
Understanding the cultural politics of incorporation. Sociology 45(4): 830–847.
Thorpe H and Wheaton B (2013) Dissecting action sports studies: Past, present, and beyond. In:
Andrews D and Carrington B (eds) A Companion to Sport. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell.
Van Bottenburg M and Salome L (2010) The indoorisation of outdoor sports: An exploration of the
rise of lifestyle sports in artificial settings. Leisure Studies 29(2): 143–160.
Wheaton B (2013) The Cultural Politics of Lifestyle Sport. London: Routledge.