Traditional climbing: metaphor of resistance or metanarrative of oppression?

Abstract

This article examines the ways in which climbers negotiate their leisure activity within a social context. It is suggested that the wider social context is one of rationalized society, whereby efficiency and growth have become ends in themselves. Although climbing is depicted as a ‘free area’ in which climbers attempt to achieve a relative freedom from this society, the encroachment of rationalized society into the activity means that climbers find themselves both divided and besieged. The response of a group of traditional climbers in Australia has been to develop some symbolic behaviours that signify resistance to mainstream society. However, these behaviours have themselves become rigid and oppressive, and their chief protagonists as alienating as the rationalized society that they wish to resist. Whether this society emerges as a ‘metaphor of resistance’ or as a ‘metanarrative of oppression’ is dependant upon its members retaining their capacity as moral subjects, rather than existing in unquestioning obedience to these rules.