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HUMANIDADES Y CIENCIAS SOCIALES
sociología - antropología - filosofía - historia - derecho - etc.
Parkour’s interactional organization. The paradoxes of media representations and how traceurs cope through non-representational strategies
Autor
Toscano, J.
2023
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Culture and Organization
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
media practices; non-representational organization; non-representational theory; paradox; Parkour
Resumen
Parkour is a recent type of sport where the body appears to produce moving sequences along urban spaces. Now, however smooth these sequences might seem, our perception of them entails media representations of the sport already. These actually generate certain uneasiness in practitioners themselves, who see them more like stagings than accurate depictions. Still, media representations are paramount to understand the social organization of parkour. What ensues is thus a paradox on parkour’s media uses, which on a closer examination uncovers the role of non-representational strategies that contribute to organize the activity. Some non-representational forms may be read or discerned through media traces, while other non-representational strategies may function as contextual common ground. Developing emergent categories out of a grounded theory approach,this article examines how both representational and non-representational elements interact together, underlining the unique capacity of a urban experience to set an distinctive organization.
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Parkour, Graffiti, and the Politics of (In)Visibility in Aestheticized Cityscapes
Autor
De Martini Ugolotti, N., & Genova, C.
2023
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Space and Culture
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
(in)visibility; aestheticized cityscapes; Bologna; embodied geographies; graffiti; parkour; Turin
Resumen
In the past decades, urban scholars have discussed at length how the production of aesthetically pleasing and consumption-enticing cityscapes has become the core of postindustrial urban economies. Critical analyses have underlined how the “dictatorship of the visual” characterizing these urban processes implies the expulsion from public life of “unacceptable” differences and conflicts within. While fundamental, these perspectives have not fully engaged with a variety of urban practices and groups that are simultaneously addressed by urban leaderships as visible assets and threats for image-based redevelopment processes. Drawing on two ethnographic studies in Turin and Bologna, Italy, this article contributes to address this gap by focusing on parkour and graffiti’s ambiguous and controversial positions in these rebranding cities. By addressing how traceurs and writers reconciled and negotiated their positioning within image-led urban redevelopment processes, this article expands existing discussions on the nexus between (in)visibility, publicness, embodied geographies, and aestheticized cityscapes
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Analysis of Standing Up in Free Running Parkour between Straight Back Flip 360? and 720?
Autor
Qawaqzeh, S. S., & Sayyah, Q. M.
2023
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Revista Iberoamericana de Psicologia del Ejercicio y el Deporte
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
Kinematic. Parkour. Body weight center. Kinova
Resumen
Backward standing is considered as one of the most important and commonly-used movements in free running parkour, where it may take place at any point while performing the skills. The study sample consisted of (1) player from the academy of Parkour and free running in Basra, where the participant trains in the hall of gymnastics training center of Basra directorate of education. Data were taken by 240 photo/second by using iPad 2020 camera, and this allowed the calculation of kinematic data. The results revealed that as the numbers of rotation increase, the communication angle at which the athlete lands on the mat while standing up decreases. In the back flip with one rotation (360°), the angle average was (51.9°), while in the back flip with two rotations (720°), the angle average was (49.3°). These results contribute to improving the technical training among parkour athletes.
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Developmental Outcomes for Young People Participating in Informal and Lifestyle Sports: A Scoping Review of the Literature, 2000–2020
Autor
Säfvenbom, R., Strittmatter, A., & Bernhardsen, G. P.
2023
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Social Sciences
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
youth sport; lifestyle sports; sporting behavior; literature review; leisure sport
Resumen
The aim of this study is to review the literature on lifestyle sports and lifestyle sport contexts with regard to the developmental potential they may represent in young people’s everyday lives. The review applies a relational developmental systems approach to youth development. The eligibility criteria are based on the phenomenon of interest and outcomes. Hence, we include studies examining the associations between young people performing lifestyle sports and potential developmental outcomes: mental, biological, social, and behavioral. The present study shows that the volume of research on informal lifestyle sport is rather extensive and that studies on the way these activity contexts may affect developmental processes in youth are diverse and wide ranging. The studies suggest that performing lifestyle sports may have several beneficial health and skills outcomes. Furthermore, positive associations are suggested between involvement in lifestyle sport contexts such as climbing, snowboarding, parkour, tricking, kiting, and surfing and (a) mental outcomes such joy, happiness, freedom, euphoria, motivation, self-efficacy, and well-being; (b) social outcomes such as gender equality, network building, social inclusion, interaction, friendship; and (c) behavioral outcomes such as identity, creativity, and expressions of masculinity and/or femininity. The review performed indicates that lifestyle sport contexts are flexible according to needs and desires that exist among the practitioners and that the human and democratic origins of these contexts make them supportive for positive movement experiences and for positive youth development. The findings have implications for PE teachers, social workers, policymakers, sport organizations, and urban architecture, in that providing lifestyle sport opportunities in the everyday lives of young people will foster a holistic development in a positive way.
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The Attempted Grobalization of Parkour by the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique
Autor
Puddle, D. , & Wheaton, B.
2023
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The International Journal of the History of Sport
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
Parkour, gymnastics, Olympics, action/lifestyle sport, institutionalization, sport governance, grobalization
Resumen
On December 3rd, 2018, the 82nd Congress of the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG), voted to include parkour as the FIG’s 8th gymnastic discipline. Unlike, trampoline and acrobatic gymnastics, which became gymnastic disciplines following the agreed dissolution of their respective federations, parkour’s inclusion followed two years of unilateral and ultra vires development of competitive showcases. Despite athlete participation in FIG-organized parkour competitions, the global parkour community has been largely opposed to parkour under FIG, especially its attempts to include parkour in the Olympic programme. This situation catalyzed the federating of the international federation Parkour Earth. However, all attempts by the global parkour community to halt the FIG’s appropriation of parkour have proved unsuccessful to date. Digital ethnographic work conducted during the controversy and the authors’ experiences as key protagonists in the formation and administration of Parkour Earth highlights the politics, influences, and power struggles between the different stakeholders. With help from Ritzer’s theory of grobalization it is clear that the FIG is attempting to grobalize parkour to grow its power and profits, and the IOC is enabling, and to some extent complicit in this process. This has implications for the parkour community and other long-standing gymnastic disciplines.
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Parkour Fails and Hébertisme: Laughing at the New Man
Autor
Smith, M.
2023
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Contemporary French and Francophone Studies
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
Masculinity; MTV’s Jackass; slapstick; The Office (NBC); Vichy; YouTube
Resumen
“Parkour Fails” represent a genre of comedic YouTube videos consisting primarily of compilations of failed stunts by practitioners of the extreme sport of parkour. Parkour originated in the suburbs of Paris and involves creative reappropriation of urban furniture. In mass media, it is usually coded as a defiant challenge to urban norms and a symbol of multicultural France’s growing social mobility. However, it was inspired by Hébertisme, a training system embraced by eugenicists and the Vichy government as a way to cultivate the New Man, an idealized figure incarnating fascist values. While parkour athletes do not endorse fascism, many promote their practice with a rhetoric of decadence and decline, return to nature, and masculine power that echoes Vichy’s New Man ideology. This article explores the extent to which parkour fail videos humorously problematize that rhetoric.
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Blubilds – drawing diagrammatic stains
Autor
Leah, J.
2022
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Drawing: Research, Theory, Practice
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
diagrammatic; drawing; Edgelands encounters; embodied; mapping; Rosalind Krauss
Resumen
This project adopts the concept of a dance diagram such as Andy Warhol’s Fox Trot (1962) introduced by Rosalind Krauss in her writing on the relationship of material forces in a diagrammatic structure to create a model of notation with actions and objects derived from Edgelands. Coined by Marion Shoard, Edgelands are post-industrial cityscapes, a typology of abandon, dereliction and decay. Shoard notes these sites are characterized by creative cultural practices of photography and graffiti; urban explorers, parkour. My Blubilds project aimed to challenge these cultural practices of parkour and graffiti to provoke new engagement in those sites. To this end, I apply the concept of Rosalind Krauss’s resistant diagram and gravity I adapted from Formless: A User’s Guide (Bois and Krauss 1997). Gravity is a force of undoing to remake spaces – and I draw with my body and equipment to facilitate gravity within a dance diagram to create a new space. This contrasts the cultural practices such as Graffiti and parkour and breaks with those existing activities to tag, mark and leave a new trace in Edgelands. Blubilds draw a live embodied diagram, based on the movement patterns found in Edgeland sites, since ‘action’ is to draw a line with the body. Tim Ingold’s approach to drawing informs my perspective that lines of movement that draw (in) place engage with the lived narratives of those places. Ingold suggests that the narratives that make place are created by entangled lines created by movement; furthermore, to ‘draw out’ – as in Douglas Rosenberg’s (2012) phrase – suggests that drawing in place ‘draws-out’ new spaces. Blue is emblematic as a nod to Krauss’s ‘rude noise, the blueprint and the acts of Graffiti’, it becomes Blubilds – a dynamic diagrammatic stain
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Contested bodies in a regenerating city: post-migrant men's contingent citizenship, parkour and diaspora spaces
Autor
De Martini Ugolotti, N.
2022
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Leisure Studies
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
Parkour, right to the city, contingent citizenship, diaspora space
Resumen
The following paper contributes to interdisciplinary debates at the intersection of informal sport/leisure, migration and urban studies. It does so by drawing on an ethnographic research with young men of migrant origins in Turin, Italy, and by addressing the relevance of parkour in the participants’ experiences and negotiations of ‘what it means to (not) belong’ in urban spaces. The focus on parkour provides a unique entry point to address the politics of belonging that unfold in urban spaces as contested sites where competing images of the city, the nation and of who belongs to them converge, clash and overlap. This is particularly relevant, though not limited to the Italian context, where political narratives and realities still legally and socially define the children of migration as alien bodies in the nation, while Turin’s urban leaderships portray youth cultures and multicultural diversity as assets for the city’s symbolic, cultural and financial regeneration. As the intersection of such discourses shapes the manifold ways through which post-migrant urban subjects become essentialised, valorised and pathologised in Turin, the paper’s findings foreground the relevance of informal sports as entry points to (re)consider discussions on citizenship, conviviality and rights (to the city) in contemporary urban contexts.
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Clothing the practice: Community building, sportification and commodification in CrossFit and parkour
Autor
De Benedittis, M & Carmoletto, R. F.
2022
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International Journal of Fashion Studies
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
Apparel; boundary-making; commodification; community-building; informational capital; sportification
Resumen
Relying on empirical data from two research projects on CrossFit and parkour, and adopting mixed methods (enactive ethnography, participant observation, online survey and social media analysis), this article aims at evidencing the role of apparel and gear in some processes engendering a transformation of the two practices. We investigate the making of boundaries – internal and external to the practices – that furnish ways of belonging to practitioners, focusing on how the processes of sportification and commodification are involved in these different ways of belongingness. We link these general processes to their connections with clothing, accessories and their material and symbolic use, showing how informational capital is at stake in this
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Regimes of Visibility in the Global Parkour
Autor
Braune, I.
2022
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Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
Gender; media; Morocco; parkour; regimes of visibility; sports
Resumen
Parkour is often defined through its strikingly visual dimension with breathtaking images of leaps covering amazing distances, recordings of seemingly impossible body movements and flying bodies apparently no longer constrained by gravity. However, the basic idea behind parkour is to find the most efficient or direct path as one crosses from one point to another while overcoming all obstacles using only one's bodily capacities. No additional tools are used or are necessary. The seemingly weightless traceurs and traceuses (parkour practitioners) run, jump and climb through public and digital space. At the same time, they produce visual footage of their best movements. As in other sporting cultures, such as skateboarding, surfing or climbing, the productions of visual material and the visual representation of the sports practices are interrelated. This hints at an entangled relationship between parkour and media in its various forms and aspects. In the following article, parkour will be described as a mediatized global cultural practice with a focus on established regimes of visibility. The analysis will be conducted from a local Moroccan and gendered perspective and using an ethnographic approach.
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Participation in street sports - a national study of participation patterns among youth and adults
Autor
Engell, Z., Larsen, S. H., & Elmose-Østerlund, K.
2023
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European Journal for Sport and Society
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
informal sports; lifestyle sports; parkour; skateboarding; Sports participation; street basket; street dance; street soccer; street sports; streetball; urban
Resumen
During the last 10–20 years, attention towards street sports has been growing internationally and in Denmark. This includes increasing attention from the main bodies for organised sports in Denmark and the development of initiatives and organisations within the field. Parallel to this, it has become more apparent that there is a general lack of knowledge regarding the participation pattern in street sports and lifestyle sports. This study examines the participation patterns and predictors of participation within seven activities collectively characterised as street sports. The data are drawn from a 2020 cross-sectional survey conducted among people 15 years and older living in Denmark. Results show that street sports activities are popular among youth and young adults, with half of all people aged 15–24 years having practised one of the seven activities. Logistic regression analysis reveals that immigrants of Western and non-western origin show higher odds ratios of practising street sports than ethnic Danes. Another important finding is that a higher level of education shows lower odds ratios of participation opposite the trends found in general research on sports participation patterns. This article reveals how street sports might have the potential to activate people who have been found to be less physically active and thereby contribute to ‘sport for all’. It provides a knowledge base for initiatives regarding the use of street sports as a vehicle for social inclusion in sports.
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L’institutionnalisation du parkour : la suppression des limites entre les espaces étanches et les espaces relâchés
Autor
Tani, S.
2023
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Social & Cultural Geography
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Francés
Palabras clave
parkour, sport mode de vie, institutionnalisation, professionnalisation, espaces étanches, espaces relâchés
Resumen
Au cours de ses vingt années d’existence, le parkour, sport et mode de vie populaire dans le monde entier, a été l’objet d’institutionnalisation, de professionnalisation et de commercialization. Dans cet article, l’analyse de ces changements s’est fondée sur des entretiens menés avec des traceurs finlandais qui possèdent beaucoup d’expérience de parkour, en tant que pratiquants et en tant qu’encadrants, celui-ci étant même l’activité professionnelle principale de certains d’entre eux. Des recherches antérieures avec les mêmes participants ont fourni les fondements pour le thème et offrent un aperçu de l’évolution du domaine du parkour en Finlande. Nous avons accordé une attention particulière aux façons dont les salles de sport et les parcs de parkour ont modifié les relations des traceurs avec les espaces publics urbains. Nous analysons ces changements en appliquant les concepts d’espaces étanches et d’espaces relâchés. Notre étude montre comment certains participants ont étroitement lié le parkour à ses origines, alors que d’autres ont insisté sur son aspect physique et n’étaient pas trop préoccupés par la structuration vers une discipline sportive reconnue. Avec la popularité croissante des salles et des parcs de parkour, sa visibilité dans l’espace public a diminué, ce qui a réduit les rencontres entre les traceurs et d’autres usagers de ces espaces et par conséquent diminue le potentiel du parkour pour relâcher les espaces urbains afin de les rendre plus tolérants envers différentes manières d’être.
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Coaching parkour: the instructed concerted actions of negotiating expectancies
Autor
Sánchez-García, R.
2023
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Sports Coaching Reviews
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
Parkour; ethnomethods; coaching; expectancies; instructed concerted actions
Resumen
This paper offers an ethnomethodological (EM) account of parkour coaching based on an eight-month participant observation conducted by the researcher in a parkour gym in Madrid (Spain). It addresses from a praxeological perspective the emotional dimension of parkour coaching: the tension balance between confidence and fear, expressed in the negotiation of expectancies upon athletes’ performances on each occasion. To do so, it provides a detailed EM analysis of the endogenous production of negotiating expectancies among members (coach and athletes) during parkour sessions. The coaching ethnomethods for negotiating expectancies constitute a social orderliness on each occasion. The negotiation of expectancies can lead to positive or negative breaching moments which demands the execution of some repair work to maintain the social orderliness of the parkour class. Such dynamic negotiation constitutes a key feature of the process along which parkour proficiency is achieved.
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Social inclusion and institutionalisation of urban lifestyle sports
Autor
Østergaard, L. D., & Larsen, S. H.
2023
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Social Issues in Sport, Leisure, and Health
Tipo de publicación
Capítulo de libro
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
Resumen
This chapter is about urban lifestyle sports and social inclusion in sports. Urban lifestyle sports, such as parkour, skateboarding, and streetball, are becoming more and more widespread even as we see a reduction in young people’s participation in traditional sports clubs. There seems to be something about the traditional, organised sport that doesn’t fit or attract a growing number of young people today. Urban lifestyle sports are interpreted as having an inclusive potential and providing an alternative to traditional clubs-based sports. Because such sports are self-organised, they can be practiced whenever, wherever, and with whomever. They are characterised by a lack of adult control, rules, and regulations and they are practiced in urban public environments with a focus on fun and play. However, urban lifestyle sport has been developed and transformed in close interaction with traditional and formal institutions and sports cultures. In this chapter, we use institutional theory to discuss how processes of institutionalization have impacted the inclusive potential of urban lifestyle sports. In order to do this, we also describe how traditional club-based sports can be both inclusive and exclusive and show how social inclusion in sports is not only a personal challenge but also a social issue.
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An organizational change perspective on the incorporation of parkour in a gymnastics federation
Autor
De Bock, T. et al.
2023
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Sport in Society
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
flanders; lifestyle sports; organizational change; parkour; Sport federations
Resumen
Over the last decades, sport federations have been confronted with new variants of sports, such as parkour. Parkour is considered a lifestyle sports which embraces a specific culture that often conflicts with the culture of federation-organized sport (Sterchele and Ferrero Camoletto 2017). Participation in lifestyle sports is increasing rapidly, which may pose a threat to the market position of federations regarding leisure sports (Gilchrist and Wheaton 2011). Despite the studies emphasizing the dichotomous relation between sport federations and lifestyle sports, our study explores why and how both can reconcile. In particular, our study examined how and why readiness for change was achieved in the gymnastic federation as well as in the parkour community for integrating parkour into the federation. Applying a single-case study design, drawing on Oakland and Tanner (2007) change framework, our study revealed several key mechanisms to develop a lifestyle sport in a federation context. Organizational learning proved to be an essential determinant to overcome the cultural differences. Furthermore, our results emphasized the importance of leveraging behavioural and technical leadership in the change process. This study enhances sport managers’ knowledge on how they should approach lifestyle sport communities, while delivering insights to lifestyle sport communities on the intentions of federations regarding their sport.
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Explorando subculturas de rua através das lentes da arte e do desporto: uma análise histórica de danca, bmx, skateboarding e parkour
Autor
Pires, I., Marques, L., Silva, L., Silva, M.
2022
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E-Revista de Estudos Interculturais
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Portugués
Palabras clave
Arts; BMX; Cultural Practices; Parkour; Skateboarding; Sports; Street Dance; Street Subcultures; Urban Space
Resumen
Scientific research is preponderant in the development and dissemination of knowledge, and, in this sense, the contemporary city is established as an object of study for understanding the behaviors and influences of cultural and artistic practices emerging in its territory. In our daily lives, we identify cultural and artistic street practices that we know little or nothing about. The fieldwork, carried out as a part of the StreetArtCEI project, has increased our interest in other urban cultural practices that we come across with, alongside graffiti and street art. In this context, we intend to explore street dance, skateboarding, BMX, and parkour, from a holistic perspective. These are inspiring activities practiced individually or in groups, mostly by younger generations, that connect the arts and the sports worlds more than ever.
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Young parkour traceurs in Mexico City: A new way to meaning and identity in urban spaces
Autor
Islas, I., Varela, S.
2022
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Semiotica
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
parkour; semiotics of culture; semiotics of sports; sociosemiotics;
urban cultural practices; virtual spaces
Resumen
The practice of parkour in urban spaces by young people, especially those who call themselves traceurs ("plotters"), illustrates how identities are formed in an ephemeral way by reinterpreting spaces in the city-briefly and without leaving a trace. However, in a sort of paradox, these interventions are registered in the socio-digital spectrum, tokenistically anchoring and incorporating them into conversations and social interactions. This work aims to explain the practice of the sport called parkour as a socio-semiotic phenomenon. We have used some zones of Mexico City as a specific case for our approach. The foregoing leads to the conclusion that the meaning of parkour goes beyond its recreational role and places it as a relevant piece of identity for excluded urban social groups-even though these practices have been appropriated by marketing strategies. Our approach will use a cultural semiotics perspective, as well as direct observations and interviews as research techniques.
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Sovereign Surfing in the Society of Control: The Parkour Chase in Casino Royale as a Staging of Social Change
Autor
Jonasson, K., Eriksson, J.
2022
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Social Sciences
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
control; discipline; Gilles Deleuze; James Bond; Michel Foucault; movement; parkour; social change; sovereignty; surfing
Resumen
In “Postscript on Societies of Control”, French philosopher Gilles Deleuze proclaimed that “Everywhere surfing has replaced the older sports”. By this, he alluded to Foucault’s thoughts on older societal regimes and power diagrams of sovereignty and discipline, and that now such models have been supplemented with governance through control and allegations of increased freedom. This article has as its point of departure the potential of sports to reflect social change. Contemporaneously to the coining of Deleuze’s surfing sentence, a new sport emerges: parkour, in which practitioners “surf” the urban realm. This practice gained attention globally when it was featured in the 2006 James Bond film Casino Royale. The analysis in this article revolves around the different ways of moving in and through the environment in the renowned parkour chase in the beginning of the movie. How do different kinds of displacement in the parkour chase of Casino Royale relate to the transition between the societies described by Deleuze, and what new adaptations emerge and what old logics and models return? It is concluded that the older forms of power prevail and that the ideal of the society of control cannot be realised.
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What Makes Parkour Unique? A Narrative Review Across Miscellaneous Academic Fields
Autor
Pagnon, D. et al.
2022
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Sports medicine
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
Resumen
Parkour is a growing sport that mostly involves jumping, vaulting over obstacles, and climbing in a non-dedicated setting. The authors gathered all known relevant literature across miscellaneous academic fields in order to define parkour with regard to other sports disciplines. Parkour is a lifestyle sport, and as such provides an alternative to mainstream sports, away from strict rules, standardized settings, and necessary competitions. Traceurs (parkour adepts) consider the city as a playground and as an outlet for their creativity, but they also have a strong taste for hard and individualized challenges. They usually train on non-specific structures, at ground level. Although their social background is not clear, they are mostly young and male. Traceurs are stronger than recreational athletes, especially in eccentric exercises. However, their endurance skills may be below average. One of the core specificities of parkour is its precision constraint at landing, which turns a standing long jump into a precision jump, regulated in flight so as to prepare for landing. The running precision jump follows the same landing pattern, and its flight phase contrasts with long jump techniques. Injuries, which are not more frequent than in other sports, often occur at landing and to lower limb extremities. This risk is mitigated by targeting the landing area with the forefoot instead of letting the heel hit the ground like in gymnastics, or with rolling in order to dissipate the impact. Overall, parkour focuses on adaptability to new environments, which leads to specific techniques that have not yet been extensively addressed by the literature.
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The institutionalisation of Parkour in Denmark. A national case of how institutional isomorphism works and affect lifestyle sport
Autor
Hojbjerre Larsen, S.
2022
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International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
Lifestyle sports, action sports, parkour, institutionalisation, sportisation, sport-for-all
Resumen
Many lifestyle sports are undergoing a process of institutionalisation and sportisation. A growing body of research in the institutionalisation of lifestyle sport is developing. This is especially the case for parkour where researchers have begun analysing how parkour has been developed in different national contexts. By drawing on institutional theory and various empirical data collected through ethnographical field studies, this article offers a qualitative analysis about how the national, socio-cultural context and the sport governance system have coloured the institutionalisation of parkour in Denmark. The institutionalisation has been driven by the practitioners’ interest in getting access to sport facilities and therefore a need to accommodate the sport governance system. But also, at the same time, by the existing associations who are facing challenges to attract young people and therefore integrating parkour into their schedules. Even though the institutionalisation creates tensions, it also illuminates how parkour has been integrated into the existing gymnastic organisations without being turned into an achievement sport, but as a sport-for-all.
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