Challenging neoliberal sport: Skateboarding as a resilient cultural practice

Abstract

This paper argues that research on sporting cultures can illuminate wider debates over the power relations materialised through the fields of cultural practice. Specifically, as neoliberalism has spread across the social realm, sport has come to mirror and reinforce its logics, placing emphasis on individualised competition and ultimately contributing to the reproduction of neoliberal hegemony more generally. Within this, however, alternative movement-based practices have emerged that show resilience to this process, offering alternative futures and new ways of being that are not organised by injustice. This paper examines the case of resilience within skateboarding, a cultural practice that champions participation and community values despite its ongoing incorporation into the neoliberal sport system.