Zugl. überarb. Fassung von: Berlin, Freie Univ. Diss., 2009

Master-Arbeit Univ. St. Gallen, 2006.

Master-Arbeit Univ. St. Gallen, 2008.

The design of alpine touring ski bindings has remained relatively static for the past fifteen years. During this period, the lack of innovative breakthroughs has become obvious through the number of customers who are currently unsatisfied by the products available on the market. This observation has presented a significant commercial opportunity to satisfy these users, plus many more non-consumers, with an innovative binding design. The objective of this project was to design a low profile alpine touring binding with the aim of satisfying the needs of these users. The resulting design followed a full year of research and development in the field of alpine touring bindings. Not only were concepts formed from completely untethered and open minded thinking, but they were also formed from reviewing various designs that already existed. These designs ranged from previous alpine touring bindings that either failed or succeeded in the market for various reasons, to completely unrelated mechanisms and designs forms. Through this process, several well formed and feasible design concepts were obtained which potentially met the design specification requirements of both high performing alpine touring bindings and downhill bindings. Detailed design and analysis followed, along with the manufacture of a fully functional prototype. This was then tested and evaluated to determine the project as a success. This project can be grouped only with a small amount of research ever conducted on the topic of alpine touring bindings. The findings, discussion and results of this work can therefore be used as a benchmark for future study into this field. Through the meticulous research conducted on skiing and ski bindings and the thorough design work carried out towards producing a prototype, this thesis presents the complete process of designing a new and innovative ski binding.

Young women occupy unprecedented space in contemporary society. Their professional ambitions, educational achievements, practices of cultural consumption, and participation in sport and leisure all offer evidence of a new position for young women. This thesis analyzes female snowboarders as exemplars of young women in contemporary society and popular physical culture. Many young women today play sport and engage in physical activity with a sense of enthusiasm and entitlement unknown to most of their mothers and grandmothers. Against this background the female snowboarder is an excellent barometer of the nature of contemporary youth and popular culture, of the changes in those cultures including the development of niche female cultural industries, and of the emerging opportunities available to middle-class women in Western society. Women's snowboarding, however, is a complicated and multidimensional phenomenon interwoven with numerous political, cultural, social and economic events and processes. In this thesis I set out to capture the complexity of female snowboarding by systematically contextualizing and interrogating the lived experiences of female boarders through drawing upon six critical social theoretical perspectives: Marxist political economy, post-Fordism, feminism, hegemonic masculinity, Pierre Bourdieu's theory of embodiment, and Foucauldian theorizing. In applying these theories, I select key concepts and engage them in conversations with my insider cultural knowledge of snowboarding, numerous periods of fieldwork, and an extensive base of artifacts and sources collected over five years. In this thesis I extend academic understandings of female youth culture via the case study of women in snowboarding, and offer a valuable critique of contemporary social theories used to explain many different social phenomena that involve tensions and power relationships between the genders. While no single theory or concept proved adequate to deal with the multidimensional phenomenon of the female boarder, each having its shortcomings and offering quite different insights, several reveal important commonalities in relation to some key concepts in critical sociology, viz, structure, agency, culture, the body and embodiment, gender and power. These commonalities, I argue, offer future directions for theorizing about, and advancing our understanding of, young women in popular physical culture.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Waikato, 2007. / Title from PDF cover (viewed April 8, 2008) Includes bibliographical references (p. 404-445)

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität St. Gallen, 2005.

This diploma thesis deals with the contribution of snowboarding to the development of tourism in the Giant Mountains and possibilities of further development in this area. The theoretical part defines tourism and its importance, administrative division and characteristics of tourist region of the Giant Mountains, and describes history of snowboarding and its environmental aspects. This part then outlines positive effects of snowboarding on the development of tourism and offers description of related development projects implemented in this area. The practical part first offers a questionnaire survey evaluating the quality of ski resorts and services in the Giant Mountains. The results are presented in the form of graphs and verbal comments. Then, the cluster analysis is conducted. The analysis divides ski areas into clusters based on selected indicators. Subsequently, the previous findings are summarized within the SWOT analysis which offers the evaluation of ski resorts, finds their deficiencies and new opportunities for further development. The empirical part complements the theoretical part which is based on thematic literature review. The conclusions of the thesis contain the author's formulation of specific recommendations for further development of the tourism in the Giant Mountains.

The purpose of this research was to identify the design characteristics and attitudes that impact the use of snowboarding helmets and to test statistically a proposed conceptual framework for identifying perceived importance of functional, expressive, aesthetic, and regulatory (FEAR) needs of snowboarding helmets for current snowboarders. Data for this study was collected online. The final sample was composed of 391 participants, which represented a 13.67% response rate. Multiple comparisons were used to examine mean differences among the FEAR variables, as well as attitudes toward helmet use. A multiple linear regression was used to test four proposed hypotheses. The results of hypotheses revealed that there was an impact between attitudes toward helmet use and perceived importance of functional needs, but this relationship depended on the level of expressive needs, aesthetic needs, and helmet usage. The typical impact of functional needs on attitudes toward helmet use was positive (slope = .013) when all variables were at their respective means (Hypothesis 1). Hypothesis 2 tested to see if there was an impact between attitudes toward helmet use and perceived importance of expressive needs, but again, this relationship depended on the level of functional needs and helmet usage. The typical impact of expressive needs on attitudes toward helmet use was positive (slope = .014) when all variables were at their respective means. Similarly, the impact between attitudes toward helmet use and the perceived importance of aesthetic needs was dependent on the level of functional needs and helmet usage. The impact of aesthetic needs on attitudes toward helmet use was typically negative (slope = -.012) when all variables were at their respective means (Hypothesis 3). Finally, Hypothesis 4 looked at the impact between attitudes toward helmet use and the perceived importance of regulatory needs. Unlike the other three hypotheses, this relationship did not depend on any other variables. The impact of regulatory needs on attitudes toward helmet use was positive, and the strength of association was .010. Although hypothesis 1-3 were substantially supported, and hypothesis 4 was fully supported, from a statistical point of view, the interaction effects between the independent variables (i.e., FEA needs) and the covariate (i.e., helmet usage) limit the findings, so we can not really state that the hypotheses were supported. However, based on information obtained from the respondents in this study, the application of a FEAR needs assessment of snowboarding helmets could help to enhance the overall performance of snowboarders. In other words, the improvement of helmet functionality, expressive qualities, aesthetic attributes and regulatory needs would provide a more enjoyable snow activity to participants. Thus, the conceptual framework of the perceived importance of FEAR needs would be acceptable to understand the attitudes toward helmet use among snowboarders. / Ph. D.

This diploma thesis examines John Dewey's concept of experience, focusing especially on his notion that an aesthetic factor is present in every complete and consummatory experience. It deals with the differences between a common experience and "an experience" and examines how an aesthetic factor works in them. The indispensable role of the aesthetic factor is intentionally demonstrated on the non-artistic example of experiences of snowboarding. The most important findings are developed through the approach of Richard Shusterman's somaesthetics. The theories of these two philosophers support the main idea of this thesis, namely that dynamic movements of the body can bring aesthetic experiences to their actor. Thus, some of the reasons that explain the attractiveness of this modern sport come to light that are not apparent at first glance.