Crossing the symbolic boundaries: parkour, gender and urban spaces in Genoa

Abstract

This paper shows how girls and women who practise parkour cross the gendered divisions of space, sport and other symbolic territories that are brought into play by so-called risk-taking sports, and how it may therefore be considered a subversive action. The strategies of negotiation produced by such symbolic crossings are examined via the concepts of reproductive and resistant agency and of gender manoeuvring. In particular the concept of gender manoeuvring will be used to examine the mechanisms of inter- and intra-gender inclusion and exclusion which, within subcultures, pass through a recognition of authenticity. Indeed, in the culture of parkour the question of authenticity emerges when media dissemination produces a split into two distinct practices: art du déplacement and freerunning. The traceuses cross this boundary because of their different origin (they are from the streets as opposed to the gym), thereby building within their gender further discourses on authenticity.

Keywords::

• parkour
• gender
• symbolic boundaries

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^1.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v+pz7g4qy019M

^2.Traceuses and traceurs are those who do parkour.

^3. This division of terminology is not recognised everywhere, for instance in the United States freerunning is the term used to mean parkour.

^4. For a summary of the debate around the use or the overcoming of the subculture term in the field of sport, see Wheaton (2007).

^5. Belle later referred to parkour's adoption by the media during the late 1990s as part of a generational ‘prostitution [and destruction] of the art’ (Christie 2003).

^6. Sportisation is the process by which ‘subaltern or alternative forms of sport, leisure and play are co-opted and incorporated into mainstream sports cultures’ (Atkinson 2009, 173).

^7.Capoeira is an activity from Brazil that combines music and movements from dance with martial arts.

^8. The concept of ‘amalgamated social fields’ is used in many studies that cross the perspective of subcultures with the concept of social field (Atencio, Beal and Wilson 2009).

^9. Thorpe (2010) identifies different models of masculinity as a result of the interweaving of the variables of age and symbolic capital. Those who feel strong on the field play with the boundaries of gender more freely. Some may even display very subversive masculinity compared with models of hegemonic masculinity, for instance by wearing pink clothes and accessories considered feminine.

^10. The subcultural theory associated with the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) has received a lot of wide-ranging criticism: the debate revolves around the idea that the concept of subculture may be inefficient as an analytical category in certain juvenile contexts (Wheaton 2007).

^11. Several university laboratories have been set up and a number of scientific journals have been created. In the Italian Sociology Association a specific section of ‘gender studies’ has been created.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Luisa Stagi

Dr Luisa Stagi, PhD in Sociology, is senior lecturer in Sociology at DISFOR, University of Genoa (Italy). Her research topics are gender, the body and food. She is co-director of the international journal of gender studies, AG-About gender (http://www.aboutgender.unige.it/ojs/index.php/generis and co-founder of the Laboratory of Visual Sociology in Genoa (http://www.laboratoriosociologiavisuale.it).