Abstract des Autors

This paper explores some of the ways in which the concept of edgework has been used and extended in sociology. It draws attention to the way in which people experience voluntary risk taking based upon social position and how this effects the construction of choice in risk-taking practice. In many edgework practices, such as rock, ice and alpine climbing the relative safety of everyday life is crucial in the construction of risk and for the sense of control that edgework produces. This leisured social position is hence used to produce experiences of serious play, or what is here referred to as an arbitrary experience of necessity. This choice is one that also allows people to enter spaces where edgework is the dominant logic of practice. The ability to move across these spaces produces distinction. This paper hence aims to clarify and extend the use of the concept of edgework to explain voluntary risk-taking.