“Grinding inequality: gender, race and class in South African street skateboarding (2023)” by Hans Berner | PhD Dissertation

Abstract: “The dissertation provides an intersectional analysis of South African skateboarding based on 14 months of historiographic and ethnographic fieldwork in Cape Town and Johannesburg conducted between 2016 and 2020. First, Berner explores the social history of South African skateboarding from the 1960s to the late 2010s, relating it to general societal developments in apartheid and democratic South Africa, and tracing its development from a ‘white sport’ to a socially diverse youth culture and sport. Second, Berner examines gender relations, the performance of masculinity through bodily practices in urban public space, and sexism and homophobia in skateboarding. Third, the author illuminates skateboarding’s potential to promote social integration, and engages with persisting race and class inequalities in South African skateboarding in detail. Berner recognises skateboarding as a socially diverse youth culture and sport, but also uncovers how social and structural inequalities of the wider society are mirrored and reproduced. Critically reflecting on the findings, Berner discusses the potential and limitations of skateboarding in public sports promotion in the South African context.”

 

This PhD Dissertation, written by Hans Berner under the supervision of Katharina Schramm, was defended in 2023 in the PhD program in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Bayreuth, and is available in English at their Repository.

ANO

2023

AUTORES

Hans Berner

EDITORES

Katharina Schramm