Edgework

The Sociology of Risk-Taking

Stephen Lyng

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• eBook ISBN: 9781135954604
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

What do skydiving, rock climbing, and downhill skiing have in common with stock-trading, unprotected sex, and sadomasochism? All are high risk pursuits. Edgework explores the world of voluntary risk-taking, investigating the seductive nature of pursuing peril and teasing out the boundaries between legal and criminal behavior; conscious and unconscious acts; sanity and insanity; acceptable risk and stupidity. The distinguished contributors to this collection profile high risk-takers and explore their experiences with risk through such topics as juvenile delinquency, street anarchism, sadomasochism, avant-garde art, business risks, and extreme sport.

Part I
Introduction

Edgework and the Risk-Taking Experience

STEPHEN LYNG

This volume emerges out of a special kind of experience familiar to all who either practice or study edgework (or do both in some cases). This is the experience of recognition. Edgeworkers of various types always recognize one another, despite great differences in lifestyle and social location. The gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, progenitor of the term “edgework,” probably expressed it best when he explained to an interviewer how he won the confidence of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang, the subjects of his first published book:

I just went out there and said, ‘Look, you guys don’t know me, I don’t know you, I heard some bad things about you, are they true?’ I was wearing a fucking madras coat and wing tips, that kind of thing, but I think they sensed I was a little strange. . . . Crazies always recognize each other. I think Melville said it, in a slightly different context: ‘Genius all over the work stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.’ Of course, we’re not talking about genius here, we’re talking about crazies—but it’s essentially the same thing. They knew me, they saw right through all my clothes and there was that instant karmic flash. They seemed to sense what they had on their hands (Thompson, 1974, p. 78).

When people separated by divisions of age, gender, class, race, occupation, and intellectual temperament come together and discover deep-seated commonalities of personal experience, they often feel a sense of connection rooted in something basic to their souls. Such is the case with edgeworkers. Whatever else may distance them from one another, risk takers almost always recognize one another as brothers and sisters genetically linked by their desire to experience the uncertainties of the edge. And for students of voluntary risk taking, this sense of commonality among diverse groups engaged in very different kinds of risk taking suggests psychic influences traceable to social and cultural forces deeply imbedded in the modern way of life.

The contributors to this book belong to a variety of academic fields, ranging from sociology and criminology to law and art criticism. Despite the differences in our training and research interests, we have discovered through lengthy conversations, reading one another’s work, and in some cases, introducing one another to our favorite edgework activities, that the risk experience is involved in a broader range of human endeavors than anyone might have previously imagined. Though it would seem that participants in extreme sports and street criminals have little in common with patrons of the high arts and academic scholars, the risk-taking dimensions of these and the other seemingly divergent enterprises discussed in this book account for similarities that are just beginning to be recognized. The studies undertaken here reveal a range of activities rooted in a common attraction to exploring the limits of human cognition and capacity in search of new possibilities of being. I am confident that if subjects from each of the social domains studied in this book were assemble in a room together, it would not be long before they recognized each other as members of the same tribe.

This appreciation of the multifaceted expression of edgework activities in contemporary Western societies has developed relatively recently. The first systematic analysis of risk taking conceptualized as edgework appeared a little over a decade ago with the publication of “Edgework: A Social Psychological Analysis of Voluntary Risk Taking” (Lyng, 1990). A small number of studies of risk taking activities such as high risk leisure sports and occupations existed prior to the publication of this article, but the edgework approach departed from the existing perspectives by conceptualizing risk taking as a form of boundary negotiation—the exploration of “edges,” as it were. These edges can be defined in various ways: the boundary between sanity and insanity, consciousness and unconsciousness, and the most consequential one, the line separating life and death. Conceptualizing voluntary risk taking in these terms directs attention to the most analytically relevant features of the risk taking experience: the skillful practices and powerful sensations that risk takers value so highly.

The promise of this approach lies in the clear answer it offers to the central question raised by edgework practices as well as the important challenge it poses to find a distinctively sociological way of making sense of this answer. The question—why would anyone risk their lives when there are no material rewards for doing so?—can be answered simply. What draws people to “extreme” sports, dangerous occupations, and other edgework activities is the intensely seductive character of the experience itself. As the participants themselves report, they do it because “it’s fun!” The challenge—to explain how lifethreatening experiences come to acquire a seductively appealing character in the contemporary social context—requires a complex sociological theory of structure and agency in late modernity. Ongoing responses to this challenge are yielding a number of exciting new perspectives on voluntary risk-taking behavior.

Thus, the primary goal of the edgework approach is to connect the immediacy of the risk-taking experience to social structures and processes located at the levels of meso- and macro-social organization. The most promising conceptual developments in the study of edgework have explored the ways in which the risk-taking experience can be understood as either a radical form of escape from the institutional routines of contemporary life (variously conceived) or an especially pure expression of the central institutional and cultural imperatives of the emerging social order. This research program expands considerably the scope of issues important to the sociological study of risk. The chief implication of this approach is that the dangers we confront in contemporary Western societies arise not only as unanticipated consequences of the social and technological imperatives of industrialism, imposed on social actors by structural forces beyond their control, but also as consequences of risks actively embraced by some social actors in coming to terms with the institutional forces shaping their daily lives. Viewed in these latter terms, risk taking is an integral part of the very fabric of contemporary social life, pursued not as a means to an end, but as an end in itself.

Edgework as Escape and Resistance

The argument that edgework is a response to the over-determined character of modern social life was first articulated in the original study (Lyng, 1990), which emphasized the institutional constraints that edgeworkers seek to transcend through the pursuit of high-risk leisure activities and in some cases, dangerous occupations. Relying on a synthesis of Marxian and Meadian ideas relating to the dialectic between spontaneity and constraint in social action, this analysis reveals how institutional arrangements that give rise to “alienation” (Marx) and “oversocialization” (Mead) are implicated in the edgework response. The analysis directs attention to the opportunities that edgework provides for acquiring and using finely honed skills and experiencing intense sensations of self-determination and control, thus providing an escape from the structural conditions supporting alienation and oversocialization.

Other researchers have adopted this same general logic while identifying different institutional imperatives impelling the edgework response. Thus, for O’Malley and Mugford (1994), the transcendent character of edgework is found in the contrast it offers to growing disenchantment within the modern world. Relying on a Weberian interpretation informed by Colin Campbell’s (1987) work on the “romantic ethic,” O’Malley and Mugford argue that edgework “appears (to actors) as the natural ‘alternative,’ the ‘other,’ to be resorted to by those seeking to escape from, to resist, or to transcend mundane, modern rationality” (1994, 198). With additional references to Elias’s (1982) study of the “civilizing” process of modernity, they locate edgework practices in the uncivilized spaces where actors resist the imperatives of emotional control, rational calculation, routinization, and reason in modern society.

Empirical studies of risk-taking activities also lend implicit support to the view that edgework serves as a vehicle of escape from social conditions that produce stunted identities and offer few opportunities for personal transformation and character development. For example, applications of the edgework concept to various high-risk leisure sports typically give expression to some version of the “weekend warrior” thesis, in which participants in these activities are seen as seeking a temporary escape from the stultifying conditions of work life and bureaucratic institutions. Similarly, studies employing a small-groups perspective often propose that risk taking generates qualities, such as group cohesion or personal character development, missing from the experience of people in certain social positions (Fine and Holyfield, 1996; Holyfield and Fine, 1997). This implies that groups organized around risk-taking and adventure activities provide a refuge for social actors confronting a formal institutional environment that does not fully meet their needs. As Holyfield and Fine note, “Today, adventure discourse surrounds the self. The undiscovered ‘real’ self (Turner, 1976) and the experience of all its emotional components are seen as necessary correctives to a ‘world gone soft’” (1997, p. 358).

A substantive area where the themes of transcendence and resistance in risk taking are particularly prominent is in the study of criminal behavior from the phenomenological and cultural studies perspectives. Jack Katz’s (1988) pioneering effort to apply a phenomenological perspective to the study of criminal action has helped spur an exciting body of research on criminal resistance and transcendence. Relying on data assembled through the use of ethnographic field methods, first-hand accounts of criminals, journalistic reports, and open-ended interviews, Katz focuses attention of the experiential “foreground” of crime, where criminals are embedded in the sensual immediacy of the criminal act. In contrast to earlier criminological theories, which assume a criminal disposition rooted in assessments of material gain or other forms of goal attainment, Katz posits that the attractions of crime have more to do with the rewards of the experience itself. Many criminal acts involve “sensual dynamics” that give the experience a deeply passionate, magical character. Katz’s qualitative data indicate that criminal events are often experienced as transcendent realities that contrast markedly with the experiential patterns of everyday social life.

Complementing and extending Katz’s work on the seductions of crime is a line of research conducted in the ethnographic/field research tradition of British and American cultural studies. The new “cultural criminology” introduced by scholars such as Jeff Ferrell and Clinton R. Sanders (1995) gives prominent attention to the role of the “adrenaline rush” in criminal endeavors and demonstrates how this and other experiential features of criminal action acquire political significance as forms of resistance. In his definitive study of graffiti writers, Ferrell (1993) makes a clear connection between the sensuality and aesthetics of the graffiti-writing experience and political theory and praxis: “When we look at graffiti writing in this way, we find its many nuances pointing toward an interesting conclusion: the politics of graffiti writing are those of anarchism. The adrenalin rush of graffiti writing—the moment of illicit pleasure that emerges from the intersection of creativity and illegality—signifies a resistance to authority, a resistance experienced as much in the pit of the stomach as in the head” (Ferrell 1993, p. 172). By experiencing pleasure and excitement in doing illicit edgework, graffiti writers demonstrate overt resistance to the “constraints of private property, law, and corporate art.” Refusing to succumb to negative emotions of shame, guilt, or fear, law violators in the grip of the adrenaline rush and other edgework sensations thumb their noses at social control agents who seek to inculcate such negative emotions as a way to achieve their goals. Like other forms of anarchism, the illicit edgework of graffiti writers and other law violators inverts the emotional plane of normative transgression to express a type of visceral revolt (Ferrell 1993, p. 172).

Thus, in recognizing the seductive and enchanting qualities of criminal edgework, we face one of the great paradoxes of the late modern era. In a powerful expression of Emile Durkheim’s insight about the nature of deviance, many crimes of the modern age can be understood as the inevitable flip-side of a rationalized, desacralized culture, one that produces by its own structural logic radical extremes of wealth and poverty, power and powerlessness—and the emotional contradiction of arrogance and humiliation that accompanies these extremes.

Edgework in the Risk Society

Although most analysts of voluntary risk taking have approached this phenomenon as a form of escape or resistance to the key structural imperatives of late capitalism, a separate line of inquiry identifies a basic consistency or even a degree of synergy between edgework practices and the institutional order of the “second modernity” (Beck, 1992). Following the work of Anthony Giddens (2000) and Ulrich Beck (1992) on the “risk society,” one could argue that the skills, competencies, and symbolic resources deriving from leisure edgework have been increasingly in demand by the risk societies evolving in the last two hundred years. This is especially the case in the advanced postindustrial societies that have seen a dramatic restructuring of institutions that manage the risks since the 1980s. With the ascendancy of “neoliberal” or “post-Keynsian” political-economic policies in these societies (O’Malley and Palmer, 1996), the responsibility for risks has been increasingly directed away from organizations and collectivities and displaced on to individuals. As Jonathan Simon (this volume) points out, edgework and center work begin to blur in this context: “The polarity between institutional life and edgework collapses. Edgework is increasingly what institutions expect of people.”

Framed in terms of the risk society model, the pursuit of risk becomes more than a response to the central imperatives of modern society. It is itself a key structural principle extending throughout the social system in institutional patterns of economic, political, cultural, and leisure activity. Thus, the insecurities of the risk society are reflected in almost every aspect of social life, from the dangers we confront in work and consumption to the uncertainties involved in leisure activities and the maintenance of our bodies and health (Reith, 2002).

In this analysis, the rise of hyperconsumption as a key economic imperative in the postwar era, along with related social and demographic changes, has contributed to the emergence of the risk-taking ethic in Western societies. Risk behaviors related to sexuality, substance use, motor vehicle operations, crime, and interpersonal conflict and violence have been particularly prominent in the subcultural patterns of postwar youth populations. These patterns became especially influential as the baby boom cohort moved into adolescence and adulthood and its consumption power began to have a powerful effect on the consumer market. The emergence of large numbers of young consumers with money to spend inspired marketing strategies that appealed to the particular consumer tastes of the youth market. One consequence of this change was the increasing exploitation of stylistic forms created by youth subcultures themselves, which brought attention to the high-risk lifestyles that produced many of these subcultural creations.

As an emerging cultural principle, the risk-taking ethic seems to accord with an increasing demand for edgework skills and perceptions in many different institutional sectors of the risk society. For instance, Mitchell Abolafia’s (1996) description of Wall Street bond traders reveals the dominance of edgework skills among an occupational group that resides at the center of the formal economy of the postindustrial social system. Although Abolafia sees bond traders as the self-interested rational maximizers posited by game theorists, his description of their “hyper-rational gaming” strategies bears a much greater resemblance to edgework skills than any system of rational decision-making. He describes the importance bond traders attribute to being able to “feel the market” and maintain “vigilance,” and their reliance on “intuitive judgment” (1996, pp. 232–238). These are precisely the kinds of embodied skills employed by individuals negotiating the life-and-death circumstances of edgework. Bond traders also describe the ineffable character of their experiences, as revealed in this quote from one of Abolafia’s subjects: “Traders cannot put into words what they’ve done, even though they may be great moneymakers. They have a knack. They can’t describe it” (1996, p. 236). Edgework skills are also reflected in the “identity tools” used by both bond traders and edgeworkers, such as the ability to control one’s emotions, the valorization of self-reliance, and the sense of one’s “nobility” as an accomplished risk taker (Abolafia, 1996, pp. 239–244).

Although it is tempting to classify bond trading as a distinct form of edgework governed by the same social–psychological dynamics involved in all other varieties of edgework, proponents of the risk society model would point out that bond trading is representative of many fully institutionalized roles that require values and skills supporting voluntary risk taking. In the emerging post-Fordist social universe, workers in most economic sectors are confronting demands for greater flexibility in the development and use of skills as well as declining long-term security in their employment contracts (Clarke, 1990). Temporary workers and contract laborers have become an expanding proportion of the labor force and work-related risks have steadily increased, in the form of higher probabilities of cyclical unemployment and forced periodic retooling of workers’ skills and knowledge. Although one would expect that these changes would generate a largely negative response from workers, it is possible that some workers actively “embrace risk” (Baker and Simon, 2002) as an opportunity for greater variety and profit in their careers. Possessing the skills and perceptions of bond traders and edgeworkers—being vigilant and self reliant, trusting one’s intuition, refusing to panic, and believing in one’s survival skills—the post-Fordist employee may be attracted to the greater risks of the new economic reality.

Thus, from the perspective of the risk society model, the growing interest in the risk-taking experience is dictated by a structural imperative governing most institutional sectors, where uncertainties are increasing over time and new demands for risk management are being placed on those who occupy positions within these institutions. In this context, leisure experience more closely resembles work experience, whereas social life in general is characterized by increasing threats to psychic and physical well-being and increasing expectations that these threats will be managed through individual rather than collective action. As the “social safety net” is slowly unwoven at the same time that environmental, technological, and economic risks expand, the risk-taking ethic assumes greater cultural saliency.

The Edgework Paradox

In reviewing the two general sociological perspectives on edgework, it seems that we confront a paradox no less troubling than the core paradox represented by the very existence of edgework activities. In one perspective, edgework is seen as a means of freeing oneself from social conditions that deaden or deform the human spirit through overwhelming social regulation and control. In the other perspective, edgework valorizes risk-taking propensities and skills in demand throughout the institutional structures of the risk society. Thus, in one view, edgeworkers seek to escape institutional constraints that have become intolerable; in the other, edgeworkers strive to better integrate themselves into the existing institutional environment. These two ways of thinking about edgework seem mutually exclusive and contradictory, but then again, perhaps they are not. We must at least consider the possibility that people may, on one level, seek a risk-taking experience of...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Figures
• Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Part I Introduction
• Part II Theoretical Advances in the Study of Edgework
• Part III The Edgework Experience: Anarchy and Aesthetics
• Part IV Group Variations in Edgework Practices: Gender, Age, and Class
• Part V Mainstreaming Edgework
• Part VI Historicizing Edgework
• Part VII Edgework in the Academy