Spectators’ Negotiations of Risk, Masculinity and Performative Mobilities at the TT Races

This paper explores the particular assemblage of place, event and individual identity performances that occur each year in the Isle of Man in and through the TT (Tourist Trophy) motorcycle races. These road races are associated with a high degree of risk for the racers and the confluence of over 30,000 visitors and 10,000 motorcycles also presents potential risks for spectators and residents alike. Both motorcycling and risk-taking have been associated with particular forms of masculinity, notably hegemonic, working class and youthful masculinities. Using detailed surveys of spectators we argue that the TT races, while undoubtedly dominated by men and predicated on a cultural privileging of speed and skill, are grounded in varying combinations of determinate and reflexive attitudes to risk, reflecting the performance of a variety of gendered, ‘biker’ and wider identity-based positionalities. Findings also highlight a particular inter-relation of mobilities and place identities at the TT races and bring to light the highly significant and under-researched embodied, performative and emotional mobilities of spectators. The conceptual and methodological importance of (a) situated research of both mobilities and gender in specific place-temporalities and (b) wider surveys of motorcyclists to complement ethnographic studies of small cohorts are also stressed

Isle of Man household income and expenditure survey 1996

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:4583.1519(1996) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

A Celtic view on minority language dynamics: support, transmission, education and target language varieties

When we talk of the modern Celtic languages today we refer to the Insular Celtic varieties that have maintained (or indeed regained) a degree of their linguistic vitality and that are practised, to varying extents and in various forms, by users of the Breton, Cornish, Irish, Manx, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh languages. Further to their common linguistic derivation, the Celtic languages share a number of additional characteristics that lend themselves well to a common analytical framework (features that they indeed share with many other ‘small’ languages). Each of the languages has, for a long time, been functioning in a bilingual, if not multilingual, environment. Consequently, in global terms, each of the languages is reliant on a relatively small pool of speakers for their survival. Perhaps unsurprisingly for those familiar with the dynamics of minority languages, then, language maintenance, revitalisation and revival projects have been among of the hallmarks of the Celtic-language experience for some time. This speaks to a familiar appetite among at least some users, as well as non-users, to go against the grain of language loss and to try to ensure that the Celtic languages are used into the future despite an extremely challenging climate