This book provides a critical investigation, and a reflection on my part, of a precarious world that is likely to appear disturbing and confounding from the outside because it is legitimated by its own logic and dynamics. What I am talking about here is the idea of a heterotopia, and the heterotopia I have in mind is a place where the stench of decay, the feel of dust and the sounds of foetid dripping water provides not only purpose but a sense of home for a group of likeminded individuals. In other words, the world I am referring to is rooted in a form of leisure known as urban exploration. It is with this in mind that the reader is invited along on a journey to witness the unpacking of a very special kind of social space that has found its footing somewhere between the real and the imaginary . Of course, some aspects of it will no doubt seem uncanny or not quite right, but the reader will be encouraged to imagine and appreciate the quixotic qualities of this world. As I will argue, this is a world that is ontologically dependent on the readerās preparedness to engage with its discourse by turning common-sense ideas upside down. It is also dependent on being willing to listen to what I have to say, if only for a short while, as I re-imagine the ways in which risk, freedom, morality and passion might be interpreted.
Why a Book on Urban Exploration as Heterotopia?
Urban exploration, which is also commonly referred to as āurbexā, is the term used to describe the activity of exploring human-made structures and environments in the twenty-first century. Although the name is relatively contemporaneous, having become popularised in the early 2000s, the activity itself is not a new phenomenon. In fact, examples of human curiosity about human-made places that somehow became lost or unknown stretch as far back as many centuries ago (Dobraszczyk 2017). Nonetheless, in present modernity the practice, or art as it is sometimes referred to, has transformed into a form of leisure that is practised globally.
At a basic level, urban exploration is all about abandoned buildings or ruins that are heavily vandalised and/or damaged by natural decay. Anyone with a broader knowledge and understanding of urban exploration, however, knows that it can in fact be broken down into a number of unique sub-categories. The classifications include, but are not limited to, āderpingā (exploring ordinary abandoned sites), āroof-toppingā (ascending to the top of buildings or other high structures), ādraining/urban spelunkingā (navigating storm drains and sewers), ālive sitesā (active or in use buildings) and āepicsā (sites that are relatively pristine and/or rarer than the average urbex). It is this all-encompassing interpretation of urban exploration that has attracted increasing scholarly interest in recent years.
Generally speaking, the way urban exploration has been examined in the current literature is in accordance with several popular themes. I will peel back the layers and unpack these themes in much greater depth in the next chapter, but for now the reader should know they include: the idea that āaesthetics of decayā provides tactile and imaginative encounters with the urban environment (Edensor 2005; DeSilvey 2017); the Situationist idea that urban exploration can be viewed as a form of psychogeographical experimentation (Pinder 2005; Mould 2015); the idea that urban exploration provides the ground under which the conditions of community can be realised (Garrett 2013; Bennett 2011); the understanding that urban exploration is a highly masculinised, misogynistic form of leisure that fails to take into account the multiplicity of different bodies that can take part (Mott and Roberts 2014; Garrett and Hawkins 2014); and, the idea that urban exploration is a deviant and rebellious form of resistance that challenges the panoptic surveillance strategies that seem to control freedom and autonomy in the twenty-first century (Garrett 2013; Mould 2015).
There is a crucial problem, however, with many of the above-mentioned interpretations and this lies with the suggestion that they often fail to fully take into account the āliquidā modern landscape in which urban exploration takes place. As key scholars such as Zygmunt Bauman (2000), Ćgnes Heller (1999) and Peter Sloterdijk (2013) have argued, modern life has become much more contingent and ambivalent, and this means our ways of thinking about modernity must adapt so that we can try to understand the fluid possibilities of our world. In other words, too many scholars are recycling āzombie conceptsā, to borrow Ulrich Beckās (2002) apt term, which are no longer very relevant for understanding present modernity. That is to say, there is seems to be some disparity between academic perceptions of urban exploration and what actually goes on in reality. In view of this, the central aim of this study has been to respond to the limits of existing studies of urban exploration by examining the pursuit in a different way. To achieve this task, this book suggests an alternative theoretical way of understanding the phenomenon, one that takes into account the people, the ubiquitous influence of consumer capitalism and the wider social, economic and political context in which urban exploration takes place.
One of the essential things that is arguably overlooked in extant urban exploration literature is the issue that conjunctural change has caused ideas of belonging, identity and community to become far more precarious, insecure and dislocated (Bordoni 2016). What this means is that these things no longer offer the respite and cordiality they once did. Therefore, taking as its starting point Peter Borsayās (2006) argument that leisure in the twenty-first century often seems to take place in āanti-structuralā, liminal places, where people form neo-tribal collectives as they try to find temporary relief, this book begins by acknowledging that a different sociology is needed to encapsulate and understand the identities and so-called ācommunitiesā of urban explorers. The different sociology I am advocating draws on Michel Foucaultās (1984) concept of heterotopia because it can be used to explore the idea that people are able to create spaces of compensation for themselves where they can, for a short time, express certain ādeviantā interests and performative identities alongside likeminded others.
In brief, then, what this book unpacks is what I have referred to as heterotopic social space. This is my way of exploring urban exploration differently, and it is against this background that three key objectives have been attended to. First, this book explores heterotopic social space generally through a leisure studies framework and specifically through Blackshawās (2017) devotional leisure thesis. Secondly, it identifies and explains how a group of urban explorers understand and control their heterotopic social space. And finally, it frames the central interpenetrating and intertwining life strategies that are adopted by urban explorers.
A Definition of Heterotopic Social Space
An Ethnography of Urban Exploration offers an interpretation of an inimitable leisure worldāthat of a group of urban explorers who call themselves WildBoyz. It involves unpacking their space of compensation in a way that enables the reader to sense how WildBoyz actually experience their heterotopic social space by providing access to the ways in which they feel, think and behave. However, the book does more than this because it also recognises the value of my role as an urban explorer turned researcher and my involvement in this world. In other words, this book follows Anthony Giddensās (1982) idea of the double hermeneutic which means it seeks to collapse the dichotomy between what is really going on in the world, as perceived by ālay actorsā, and what the social sciences say is happening by understanding and explaining social action with abstract theories and technical terminology. As my definition of heterotopia is disclosed it will hopefully become clear why this position is an essential one, and why the heterotopic social space of WildBoyz could not have been explored as effectively in any other way.
Keeping that last point in mind, my definition of heterotopia is built on the concept outlined in Foucaultās paper Of Other Spaces and therefore denotes a āplace of othernessā. Analogous to Foucault (1984), this book suggests that heterotopia is best defined if it is juxtaposed with the idea of utopia (that word used to describe paradisiacal places or spaces that have been wholly imagined). In contrast, then, heterotopia might be referred to as a āfallen paradiseā that is ādecentredā, āfound in no place in particularā and āassociated with devianceā (Blackshaw 2010: 137). Heterotopias, in other words, are the opposite of anything utopian. They are real compensatory places or spaces āwithout geographical markersā and they can be found in all cultures and societies (Foucault 1984: 5). In this regard, my definition of heterotopia begins with the notion that it is a type of āimaginary communityā that lies outside all other rational places in a culture or society while also being located in culture and society.
The second crucial feature of my definition is that heterotopias are collective (and therefore social) spaces where likeminded individuals come together to engage in forms of leisure, especially those that are perhaps less acceptable or forbidden in the everyday world. In this sense, urban exploration is a prime example. However, what my definition also takes into consideration is the fact that while heterotopias are invariably social, they also cater to the needs of individuals because people are able to find their own personal sense of meaning in heterotopia. As Foucault (1984) points out, heterotopias challenge the hegemony of a single space as they can juxtapose several spaces that are perhaps incompatible and contradictory in one single real space.
The third important component of my definition of heterotopia, as the reader might already have guessed, is that they tend to b...
