Role Exits: Bailing Out of Core Skateboarding

• In Event: 078 - Section on Sociology of Culture Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 06. Roles and Identities in Arts, Work, and Recreation

Abstract

This paper investigates the process of exiting a subcultural identity. Building from Ebaugh (1988), I examine how one’s primary socialization, place in the social structure prior to entering the subculture, and one’s subcultural values and practices affect the exiting process. Specifically, I examine how American and Canadian “core” and professional skaters’ exit the subculture of skateboarding. Skateboarding has positioned itself as a resistive counter-culture and skaters often overtly reject many middle-class values and practices. Intuitively it would seem that by rejecting many middle-class norms, values, and behaviors the skaters might reduce their ability to negotiate the transition into a new role. However, my findings show that the skaters’ primary socialization, initial status within the socio-economic hierarchy, and capital developed while engaging in the subculture may assuage or alleviate the negative effects related to heavy participation in the deviant subculture of skateboarding. In this paper, I provide a detailed examination of the culture surrounding skateboarding and investigate how a strong commitment to skateboarding and the internalization of skateboarding’s core values, attitudes, and performances as they intersect with class, race, and gender affect the skater’s transition into a new identity.

Author

• Tyler Dupont, SUNY at Buffalo