Dissecting action sports studies: Past, present, and beyond

Abstract

The term “action sports” broadly refers to a wide range of mostly individualized activities such as BMX, kite-surfing, skateboarding, surfing, and snowboarding that differed – at least in their early phases of development – from traditional rule-bound, competitive, regulated Western “achievement” sport cultures ( Booth and Thorpe, 2007 ; Kusz, 2007a ; Wheaton 2004, 2010 ). Various categorizations have been used to describe these activities, including extreme, lifestyle, and alternative sports. In this chapter, however, the term action sports is used as it is currently the preferred term among committed participants and industry members in North America and Australasia (many of whom reject the overly commercialized “extreme” moniker imposed upon them by transnational media and mainstream sponsors during the mid- and late 1990s). Many action sports gained popularity during the new leisure trends of the 1960s and 1970s and increasingly attracted alternative youth, who appropriated these activities and infused them with a set of hedonistic and carefree philosophies and subcultural styles ( Booth and Thorpe, 2007 ; Thorpe and Wheaton, 2011a ; Wheaton, 2010 ).