Abstract
As extreme sports gain popularity – so does the public appreciation of such sports. Mass media are full of panegyric appraisals of these self-driven, individualistic athletes that dare to “live life to the fullest.” Voluntarily seeking risks, in general, and in extreme sports specifically, is often understood in terms of individual traits or the unique, strong emotions such experiences give. In this article, we move beyond individualistic explanations of risk-taking that understand risk-taking as personal traits. Instead, we focus on processes of recognition based on group values. More specifically, based on autoethnography and interviews with elite climbers in Norway, we explore to what extent risk-taking is built into the value system of climbing, and to what degree risk-taking leads to peer-recognition and credibility within rock climbing communities. We find that there is a clear connection between risk-taking and recognition in the value system of climbing. As newcomers become part of the climbing culture they learn what has value and make these values part of their own intrinsic motivation. Hence, climbers develop what we call a risk-libido. However, the results show that there are no clear-cut demarcations between actions that lead to recognition, actions that go unnoticed and actions that lack credibility because they are seen as foolhardy. The fact that these boundaries are not clear, does not mean that boundaries do not exist. Based on our findings, we develop and propose a model of “Credibility-Zones” that establish the general principles of honor- and status distribution within rock-climbing in regard to risk-taking. Of particular interest is our finding that among the most respected, “consecrated,” climbers, the “Credibility-Zone” is wider and less defined than for average climbers.
Highlights
When climbers are forced to legitimize their risk-taking behavior, they will usually say something like “It’s fun,” “It gives me great experiences of and with nature,” or “It’s about mastering something difficult and potentially dangerous.” A philosophically inclined climber might answer with a quote from the Norwegian existentialist and climber Peter Wessel Zapffe: “Mountaineering is meaningless as life itself— its magic can never die” (Zapffe, 1969/2012, p. 93)
When asked about motivation, they will give answers in a language that is shaped within the same subculture; they speak about motivation for climbing in the ways they have learned to talk about it within the climbing culture
Before we can say anything about the individual climbers’ motives in undertaking dangerous endeavors, we must lay out the value system of climbing and study the role that risk-taking plays within this system
Summary
When climbers are forced to legitimize their risk-taking behavior, they will usually say something like “It’s fun,” “It gives me great experiences of and with nature,” or “It’s about mastering something difficult and potentially dangerous.” A philosophically inclined climber might answer with a quote from the Norwegian existentialist and climber Peter Wessel Zapffe: “Mountaineering is meaningless as life itself— its magic can never die” (Zapffe, 1969/2012, p. 93). We will give this a little twist and state that climbers do not climb because the mountain “is there” but because other people “are there,” that means that we will explore the social component of risk-taking behavior in regard to climbing. Risk-taking behavior has puzzled researchers from various academic backgrounds for a long time. Considerable research has been conducted on themes such as risk-taking and personal psychological traits on the one hand and risk-taking and experiences, such as flow, on the other. Little research has focused on the social psychological mechanisms behind risktaking. To explain our approach to risk-taking, it is necessary to give a brief overview of the academic literature that describes and explains the phenomena of voluntary risk-taking. The different ways of understanding risk-taking, at least in regard to sports, can be broadly summarized with three main approaches: (1) the individualistic, (2) the “phenomenological,” and (3) the sociological
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