‘Sex, drugs and snowboarding’: (il)legitimate definitions of taste and lifestyle in a physical youth culture

Abstract

This paper examines the hedonistic social interactions and lifestyles embraced by many contemporary physical youth cultural participants via the case of snowboarding. Drawing upon an array of primary and secondary sources collected over seven years, I present a three-part analysis of the hedonistic party lifestyle, alcohol and drug consumption (for both pleasure and performance), and the hyper-sexuality, at the core of the snowboarding culture. Engaging Bourdieu’s theory of distinction, and particularly his concepts of field, practice and taste, in dialogue with my empirical evidence, I reveal the definitions of pleasure and the hedonistic snowboarding lifestyle as highly contested. While many cultural participants are complicit to hierarchical and/or violent attempts to regulate the dominant tastes and practices within the snowboarding field, others are engaging in an array of symbolic and embodied struggles to (re)define meanings of ‘pleasure’ in the snowboarding lifestyle and après snow culture more broadly.

Keywords:

• lifestyle
• youth culture
• snowboarding
• Bourdieu
• pleasure

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the Editors, particularly professor John Horne, and the reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions throughout the development of this paper. I am also thankful for the financial support provided by the Leverhulme Trust (UK) and the Faculty of Education at the University of Waikato (New Zealand), which helped make various stages of this research possible. Many thanks also to the participants who willingly dedicated their time, energy and knowledge.

Notes

1. A notable exception, however, is Evers’ (2010) extensive work on the hedonistic lifestyles and social and physical risk-taking of young male Australian surfers.

2. Despite some common practices and philosophies across these cultures, it is important to note that the use of drugs and alcohol, and the social interactions of participants are unique to each physical youth culture and vary within and across different spaces and places and over time, depending on an array of factors (e.g. the distinct physical and social environments where participants practice and perform their activity and interact with their peers; local, regional, and national laws regarding the use of drugs and alcohol in various spaces and places; accessibility and cost of drugs and alcohol; and trends in broader popular culture and other youth, music and physical cultures, etc.).

3. As the snowboarding culture has become increasingly divided, the relations between skiers and snowboarders have also shifted. Whereas cultural differences divided early skiers and snowboarders (Humphreys, 1996), today many skiers, particularly young skiers, are drawing inspiration from the styles of participation, technologies, jargon and fashion of freestyle snowboarders. This trend is filtering into the broader alpine snow culture, such that in most North American and Australasian resorts, and many European destinations, style of participation (i.e. freestyle, big mountain, and alpine) is the primary divide with skiers and snowboarders increasingly sharing terrain as well as styles of talk and dress, training methods, and lifestyles.

4. I suggest now that this ‘silence’ in my early work (and perhaps many other studies of youth-dominated action sport cultures), was due to a (subconscious) fear that the hedonistic practices and performances of snowboarders in bars and nightclubs did not warrant legitimate intellectual inquiry.

5. Due to the sensitive nature of some of the questions, I selected participants with whom I had already established rapport and a trusting relationship. I also invited participants who had previously demonstrated an ability to reflect upon, and articulate, their experiences in the snowboarding culture, and an expressed interest in further involvement in this project.

6. During these phases of fieldwork, I observed, listened, engaged in analysis and made mental notes, switching from snowboarder to researcher depending on the requirements of the situation. Of course, the covert nature of some aspects of these participant-observation phases raises many ethical issues (Sands, 2008; Wheaton, 2002). While all participants have the right to know when their behaviour is being observed for research purposes, in some situations it was not feasible (or, indeed, safe) to declare my researcher identity or ask for informed consent from all participants (e.g. at a big air snowboarding event with thousands of young, intoxicated spectators). Engaging in ‘situated ethics’, I negotiated my way through the various social situations differently depending on the dynamics of the interactions and my role in the relations (Simons & Usher, 2000; Wheaton, 2002). For a more detailed discussion of my methodological approach and the ethical issues that emerged during my fieldwork, see Thorpe (2011).

7. Adopting what Munslow (2006) terms a ‘constructionist approach’, in this project I privilege neither theory nor empiricism, instead inferring answers from questions I ‘put to the evidence and not from the sources, which cannot speak for themselves’ (p. 49). Adopting such an approach allowed a certain degree of creativity and reflexivity in which theory and empirical work intertwined and informed each other throughout the various phases of this study of global snowboarding culture, and the hedonistic snowboarding lifestyle more specifically.

8. While the pleasurable dimensions of sport often go overlooked by critical sport scholars, some are adopting Foucauldian approaches to examine the complex relationship between power, pleasure, desire, pain, and discipline in sports such as Ironman triathlon (Bridel, 2010), ultra-running (Hanold, 2010), and rugby (Pringle, 2009).

9. Of course, the use of recreational drugs and alcohol consumption varies within and across different snowboarding destinations. For example, Whistler (British Columbia, Canada) is well known for its relaxed laws regarding marijuana use, and the drug is frequently and openly consumed on the mountain – e.g. ‘hot boxing’ the gondola is a common practice among skiers and snowboarders alike – and in various public spaces (e.g. bus stops). In contrast, snowboarders living in Salt Lake City (Utah) employ an array of highly creative strategies to access full strength alcohol and navigate the stringent laws established and regulated by the Mormon culture.