method & background

The research method

Freeskiing is a complex microcosm that cannot simply be cut into separate pieces or simplistic questions that can be answered bit by bit. Instead it must be understood as a whole – and therefore, it must be studied as a whole.

A special research strategy is needed to capture this complexity: Ethnography. Freeskiing is treated like foreign culture and freeskiers are studied like a folk in the wilderness. Dwelling among them, the ethnographer seeks to learn its wisdom. And there are many ways to learn: Interviews, observations, documents, photos, videos, music and websites are all employed as sources of data. Over a period of three years, the research aims to explore all important aspects of freeskiing. It does not include the sporting practice alone, but extends to companies, events and media studies.

 

The scientific background

Some important streams of research that this projects aims to make a contribution to include:

“Subcultures of prosumption”

Freeskiers not only consume, almost all of them also produce: They shoot and cut videos, build elaborate websites, invent their own clothing labels, shape obstacles and much more. Freeskiing therefore provides a model case for the development of a cultural explanation of what Alvin Toffler called prosumption. With reference to the recently intensified debate on various forms of prosumtion, I have argued that prosumtion permeates almost all practices of subcultures like Freeskiing because it conveys a sense and symbol of authenticity superior to the consumption of mass-produced commodities.

“Practices of seeing“

Since Freestyle Skiing is an inherently aesthetic practice, its sole goal being the (re)enactment of certain performative moves or tricks (such as sliding down a handrail while rotating in changing directions), it provides an especially apt example of how bodily and material practices are intertwined with the visual. I am thus interested in the various “practices of seeing” (Goodwin) that are involved in ‘doing Freeskiing’: The ‘learning by watching’ of the athletes, the complex and highly coordinated organization of focus and stance during trick performances (which also adds a ritual dimension in the sense of Randall Collins) as well as the various “media practices” (Ferrell) that make up an important part of the Freeskiing routine, for example shooting pictures and videos of the training, watching and commenting the trials of oneself and others on video, editing one’s own videos and sharing it on social media websites, watching professional ski movies with never waning interest, and so on.

On a theoretical level, these practices – I think – can instruct us that ‘seeing’ itself is not only a prerequisite to most practical competences, but also a practice and situated accomplishment in itself.  Here, I intend to build on the ethnomethodological studies of work that have been examining such practices, albeit usually in more stationary contexts. Furthermore, the notion of observation makes up a core element of Luhmannian systems theory, which may expand the theoretical understanding of how ‘seeing’ is reflexively constitutive of the order it focuses.

“Material memory”

In sociological theory, artifacts are frequently reduced to their symbolic value (i.e. in Baudrillard), and their aesthetic quality is understood as a communicative effort of style or taste (as in Bourdieu). Alternately, they are reduced to their functional value, enabling or inhibiting certain social practices (as the Berlin Key in Latour). In both views, objects are basically seen as materializations of their designers’ intentions, a concept that can be traced back to Alfred Schutz and the phenomenological preoccupation with intentionality. Using my ethnographic data, I intend to show how aesthetics can instead be seen as a code or frame of reference that orients an evolutionary selection-process of material practices. Building on the notions of oriented objects by Garfinkel and material memory by Luhmann, I will propose a different account of the function of aesthetics for the social life of things.