Risk, Gender, and Fire Arts: Expanding the Sociological Understanding of Flow

• In Event: 035 - Section on Sex and Gender Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 05. Embodiment

Abstract

The concept of flow, or the psychological experience of complete absorption and transcendent action in an activity, has been well documented in psychological literature. Flow experiences can help illuminate why individuals take part in high risk and hobbyist activities, when they reorganize their identities and self-imagine, and how they become attached to and incorporated into activity-based communities. Based on its origins in psychology literature, some research begins to add social concerns and analysis to the investigation of flow in order to make it a sociological useful tool. This paper attempts to expand the understanding of how individuals’ experiences of flow are social through investigating social meanings and experiences in a flow and fire arts community. As flow is often produced though the exertion of bodily skill in extreme or high risk activities, one available method for understanding how social meaning intersects with the flow experience is through the body and systems of gender attached to it. Within the sport of fire spinning, men and women experience different kinds of flow due to the social system of gendered meanings attached to different performance styles and forms of practice. In contrast to other work on high risk activities and hegemonic masculinity, the risk and flow of fire arts produces masculinity and femininity, as well as a space for gender experimentation and gender pleasure. Individuals not only reorganize their self understandings based on these experiences, but pursue different kinds of flow based on their gendered, social understandings of themselves and their bodies.

Author

• Kathryn Hendricks, University of Chicago