Roughly speaking, since around the turn of the twenty-first century, there has been a significant growth of sports that have been understood and conceptualised as somewhat different from so-called traditional, mainstream Western achievement sports. Consequently, a wide variety of alternative and extreme sportsâincluding competitive climbing, ultra-marathoning, skydiving, ultimate fighting and a mix of other activitiesâhas come to receive increased attention from researchers, the media and commercial stakeholders. A steadily growing number of committed practitioners have also contributed to strengthening the grass roots of these kinds of sports. Obviously, they all have their own distinctive histories, geographies, identities and development patterns. Some are recent phenomena, while others have cultural histories that echo back for centuries. At the same time, they can be said to share some commonalities concerning how they have gradually developed from somewhat subcultural, marginal and pre-commercialised physical (youth) cultures, into spectacular sports with great numbers of practitioners and large audiences in contemporary society (Thorpe 2006; Wheaton 2004, 2013).
The scholarly debate on how we should understand and label the development and growth of sports considered at odds with the concept of Western achievement sports and values has been lively (Turner and Carnicelli 2017). Commentators have suggested, for example, that some sports might be better suited to being conceptualised as forms of play rather than sports, thus situating these activities outside the field of sport studies entirely (Howe 2003). Others have emphasised the notion of the alternative , to both mainstream sport and normative societal values, thus positioning these kinds of sports on the margin, and as typically niche and minority events, often connected to certain youth cultures and the notion of risk through physical activity (Turner and Carnicelli 2017). Another take on this discussion is presented by Rhinehart (2000), who suggests that alternative and extreme sports are not primarily to be understood in contrast to mainstream sport (although this too is relevant), but rather in relation to a range of debates concerning the meanings, values, lifestyles and identities that are attached to them (see also Borden 2001; Wheaton 2004, 2007). It can also be argued that it is unfair to portray them as alternative or marginal at all. At the turn of the century, there were, for example, about 20 million surfers, 40 million skateboarders and 18.5 million snowboarders worldwide (Borden 2001), and at this time, these boarding cultures were outpacing the growth of several âtraditionalâ sports, including baseball (Wheaton 2004). Similar tendencies can be found among different endurance sports such as Ironman triathlon, multi-sport and ultra-marathons, which have also been steadily growing during the past decades, having an impact that stretches far beyond the lifestyles of their practitioners. Consequently, aiming to label different sports and physical cultures in terms of mainstream, subcultural, alternative or something else can be misleading, as it suggests that the status and understanding of a sport is static over time, rather than changing and developing.
Conceptualising the Extreme
This book can be situated within a currently growing body of literature in which researchers have analysed the development of a variety of training trends and the impact different forms of exercise have on the individualâs body, identity, lifestyle and perception of his/her social surroundings. The empirical focus is on three strategically selected sports that can be broadly positioned within a scholarly debate on alternative extreme sports. The selected sports are bodybuilding, Ironman triathlon and mixed martial arts (MMA). Aiming to pinpoint these three sports in relation to relevant research areas, we have chosen to write about them as extreme sports, here defined as sports in which athletes in different ways and by different means challenge and transgress societal perceptions of what is humanly possible to achieve in terms of physical training and bodily development/performance. In this sense, we argue that these three sports are extreme, and per se also to be viewed as alternative, although not necessarily in a marginal sense or in sharp contrast to what is considered to be a mainstream sport or common culture. Furthermore, and as will be shown, there are good reasons to argue that peopleâs perceptions of the extreme are connected to their understanding of gender. We will return to the gendered dimensions of extreme sports and bodies repeatedly throughout the book.
There is currently a large body of literature examining the phenomenon of alternative extreme sports and bodies (Donnelly 2006; Brevik 2010; Turner and Carnicelli 2017). Over time, the labelling of the broadly used term alternative sports has also been successively refined, and the prefixes of these sports have variously been discussed as, for example, âextremeâ, âactionâ, âlifestyleâ, ânewâ, âpostmodernâ and more. While some scholars have made great efforts to explain and define the differences between these labels, aiming to distinguish the unique characteristics of different sports, others have used the labels synonymously. Fully aware of this ongoing scholarly discussion on how to define and position different so-called alternative sports and kin conceptualisations, here we will use a broad and heuristic understanding of the concept. We will discuss extreme sports and extreme bodies not as a particular and strictly demarcated field of research that can be neatly distinguished from other sports and physically active bodies, but rather as a complex phenomenon. We will embrace a perspective in which the extreme (sport/body/lifestyle/identity) is seen as a somewhat fluid, contextual and relational concept. The concept of the extreme will thus be approached as an analytical window (rather than a sport per se) that can be utilised to understand different lifestyle choices and how people, through different means, are finding new ways to define themselves and their bodies, as well as the impact these choices have on how they live and relate to their social surroundings. The concept of the extreme is, of course, also unconditionally tied to some sort of perception of the non-extreme or the common/ordinary/profane/normal, which can be found at the other end of an imagined continuum. Thus, engaging in the extreme should be understood as a process that simultaneously includes some process of extrication. This process, in which bodies to some extent detach from or transgress (preconceived) societal boundaries, can sometimes be cherished and idealised within both mainstream and alternative extreme sport contexts, but it can also at other times awaken feelings of disgust and condemnation, and even be seen as a threat to society. We will return to this discussion repeatedly in the different chapters of the book, developing our line of argument on extreme sports and extreme bodies.
The interest in extreme sports, as well as in so-called lifestyle sports and adventure sports, has increased significantly in recent decades (Wheaton 2004; McNamee 2007; Brymer and Oades 2009; Breivik 2010; Garcia and Spencer 2013; Turner and Carnicelli 2017). Due to the nature of these sports, scholars have commonly utilised ethnographic methods to get close to so-called core members of these physical cultures. Marathon runners, surfers, skydivers, bodybuilders and others have been analysed as extreme lifestyle sport enthusiasts (Turner and Carnicelli 2017). As such, these sports and athletes have been approached analytically in relation to subcultural affiliations and perspectives based on theoretical traditions that can be traced back to, for example, the Birmingham School (Donnelly 2006). Accordingly, researchers have tended to focus on aspects of working-class masculinities, resistance and to some extent detachment from commercial mainstream values. Lately, however, as argued, sports such as triathlon, ultra-marathons and MMA have been revived. It has been argued that, no matter how peripheral they are in the world of (mainstream) sport, extreme sports should also be understood as determined, defined and developed in relation to the processes of commercialisation and the development of an individualised contemporary enterprise culture. Thus, extreme sports have been situated within, for example, the historical conjuncture of Western individualism, global communication, entertainment industries and a growing global and young, most often white/Caucasian, population (Kusz 2007). Therefore, due to the increasing popularity of different extreme sports, the idea of subcultures can be problematised, and scholars have suggested a more fleeting, transient perspective on extreme sport communities and spectaclesâa perspective characterised by fluid memberships (Wheaton 2007).
To capture the character of these more fleeting and often mediated youth cultures, concepts such as neo-tribes, post-subcultures and lifestyles have also been introduced and employed (Williams 2006; Robards and Bennett 2011). When introduced in the 1990s, this discussion was often (and still is) related to the development and use of digital/social media and to different âdo-it-yourselfâ (DIY) youth movements (McArthur 2009). As a reaction to this tu...