The Value of Jumps: commodification and sportization of parkour Abstract: The subject of this thesis is a young urban lifestyle discipline called parkour. In the past couple of years parkour gained a lot of popularity in Czech Republic. Connected with that is also the exploration of the ways to get parkour into the state of commodity. At the same time parkour as a sport is finding its place in public discourse. An ethnographic research that is the basis for this thesis is following the flowline of two processes - commodification and sportization. Based on data created using participant observation and semi-structured interviews I describe how these processes are manifested, how they are connected and how they are interpreted by the actors on the Czech parkour scene. I argue that both sportization and commodification influence how traceurs and traceuses make sense of their discipline. Both processes seem to play an important role in the construction of authenticity in parkour. At the end I describe certain trends and changes in parkour that can be considered results of commodification and sportization of this discipline. Key words: parkour, commodity, commodification, sportization, lifestyle sport

Parkour is a sport with a focus on overcoming obstacles. Parkour practitioners utilise specialised techniques relating to movements such as running, jumping, vaulting, climbing, swinging, rolling, and occasionally acrobatic manoeuvres in order to traverse a path through urban and rural environments. Parkour is a new sport, and as it continues to grow in popularity, there is an accompanying demand for parkour instructors. As a result, programmes to train parkour coaches have been created in various parts of the world. There has been minimal scholarly research conducted regarding parkour, and much of the current parkour research focuses either on parkour athletes, or the perceptions of parkour by non-parkour athletes. No research was discovered regarding parkour coaches. This exploratory study aimed to: (a) explore how parkour coaches learn to coach; and (b) explore the perceptions held by parkour coaches regarding parkour coach education programmes. In the first article, titled ‘How Parkour Coaches Learn to Coach: Coaches’ Sources of Learning in an Unregulated Sport’, participants’ responses related to the themes of: parkour coaching experience, previous leadership experience, experience as an athlete in parkour and other sports, other parkour coaches, non-parkour coaches, parkour coach education programmes, school, reflection, and the Internet. The second article, titled ‘What Does It Mean to be a Certified Parkour Coach? Parkour Coach Perceptions of Formal Coach Education Programmes’, shared participants’ perceptions of formal parkour coach education programmes, including: potential benefits and risks to participation in such programmes, modifications that could be made to the programmes, and parkour coach perceptions of coach education programmes for other sports.

This thesis examines the multiple meanings attached to risk by a small group of climbers based in the North of England. The study is anchored, empirically in sustained observational fieldwork, and in-depth interviews with adult subjects (9 females aged 22-77, 14 males aged 20-70). In completing this thesis, I believe I have made an original contribution to knowledge in three areas. In re-imagining risk in climbing, I argue that climbers do not participate in climbing because of a desire to take risks, rather, they make every effort to assess, manage and control risks when climbing. In reconceptualising risk in climbing, I present a conceptual model derived from the interviewees’ accounts of risk. This model situates risk in climbing with risk in everyday life. The basis of my third original contribution to knowledge lies in the relationship between risk and identity. The interviewees differentiated between safe and unsafe climbers through reference to embodied climbing practices. The way a climber in this study assessed and managed risk marked them as a safe climber or conversely an unsafe climber. Furthermore, the data revealed both a gendered and an age-related dimension to the relationship between risk and identity. The desire to retain the identity of a climber over time was so strong that older climbers reported modifying their practices to sustain their status as a member of the insider group. In addition, the female interviewees described how perceived family responsibilities mediated membership of the insider group, and their identity as a safe and qualified climber. The female climbers in this study described how such responsibilities led them, like older climbers, to draw back from the edge. These findings have implications beyond the sport of rock climbing and its participants. This research has the potential to inform and enhance our appreciation of risk in other lifestyle sports and moreover, whilst there is a tendency to distinguish between lifestyle and traditional sports, there may be some application of the account of risk presented here to an exploration of risk in traditional sports. The arguments presented in this study also contribute to an understanding or risk more generally. A key conclusion from this study is that risk is best understood where the meanings attached to it are derived from individuals’ everyday lived experience and relatedly where risk is situated within the broadest context of their lives. Finally, the data reported here suggests that risk activities and risk-taking should be explored in relation to an individual’s perceived identity and crucially, the significance of risk for the construction of that identity.

Background: Sport is often perceived as inherently positive for sustainable development. This widespread assumption is however found to be quite normative, and the standardization of its boundaries dangerously naive. The lack of contextual specificity across the dominant schools of thought calls for a more comprehensive analysis of what different activities entail in different contexts.  Purpose: This study examines the field of sport for development through a critical lens. Different initiatives using traditional mainstream sports and lifestyle sports, seeking an array of social development objectives, are structurally and systematically unpacked, hence uncovering the attributes that shape the achievements and challenges of the projects.  Methods: Through a qualitative approach, six organisations operating in varying scopes and environments were interviewed using a semi-structured approach.  Results: The investigation pinpoints the encompassing theme of sportification as a force of change influencing the internal and external dynamics of lifestyle sports as well as traditional mainstream sports, though to a lesser extent. Several important issues emerge from the investigation, such as how the notions of focus, networks and the fundamental benefits and challenges underlying each type of sport can materialize into concrete impacts on social development.  Conclusions: A fine balance of sportification is necessary in order to gain the leverage and capital required to access the opportunities presented by organized sport yet without excessively compromising the innate social qualities of the activity.

Lifestyle sport has become a significant sociological phenomenon, with millions participating worldwide. Using windsurfing as a case study, this thesis focuses on core members of this subculture to discover their motivations for involvement and the degree to which they are willing to sacrifice other areas of their lives in order to participate. The thesis explores the contention that this level of sacrifice amounts to resistance to the dominant consumerist culture of our society. The study examines the way subculture members manifest an embodied critique of urban experience that takes place outside of that environment in natural spaces, using time that consumerist imperatives would have them in the earn-spend spiral dictated by that ideology. It does this through a twelve month ethnographic study, with the author as a complete participant, then as a participant observer, completing formal interviews with a number of selected core members of the subculture. Through interviewing and observation it became clear that it is only possible for subculture members to participate through the consumption of considerable quantities of the material objects associated with the activity. This means that participants are resisting consumerist culture through the consumption of consumer goods. This contradiction goes to the heart of the ways that consumerist ideology co-opts resistant behaviour. The study shows that windsurfers are resistant to consumerism in a number of ways. The rejection of traditional sporting values, the use of time in opposition to dominant practices, the rejection of wealth as the primary measure of success, and resisting cultural expectations are all manifestations of this resistance. The niche visual media of the subculture creates a dreamworld of natural perfection and freedom. The way that the visual culture mediates the paradox central to my thesis is by valourising a lifestyle, and those who adopt it, rather than selling consumer goods.

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