Skydiving and the metaphorical edge

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Identity, imprisonment and narrative configuration

This article addresses the role of self-narratives for coping with the laws of captivity. By focusing on how confinement can disrupt narrative coherence, the intention is to examine the role of self-narratives for interpreting previous events and anticipating future actions. Drawing on a range of interdisciplinary research on self-identity, imprisonment, and offender narratives, this article highlights how narrative reconstruction can alter our desires, commitments, behavior, beliefs, and values. By (re)telling a story about our lives, it is possible to reinterpret existing circumstances and make new connections between our past, present, and future selves. Whereas research suggests the importance of narrative reconstruction for protecting against a sense of meaninglessness, this article shows how self-narratives have the potential to be empowering and divisive. The final part of the article examines how the narratives inmates construct about themselves and others can serve to legitimize violence against other prisoners

Escaping the self: identity, group identification and violence

This article draws on the early work of Erich Fromm. In Escape from Freedom (1969) Fromm directly addressed the psychological mechanisms of escape modern individuals employ to protect themselves from feelings of ontological insecurity and existential estrangement. The article builds on Fromm’s analysis by discussing the significance of his escape mechanisms for understanding the dynamic psychological attractions of identifying with entitative groups. Fromm’s work will be discussed in relation to Hogg’s recent work on uncertainty-identity theory. The aim of the article is to examine the advantages of combining Fromm’s psychoanalytic analysis with Hogg’s uncertainty-identity theory and to highlight the potential this approach has for understanding why groups engage in violent and destructive behaviour

Mass violence and the continuum of destruction: a study of C. P. Taylor’s Good

There are important studies that have directly focused on how, in times of conflict, it is possible for previously law abiding people to commit the most atrocious acts of cruelty and violence. The work of Erich Fromm (Escape from Freedom), Hannah Arendt (Eichmann in Jerusalem), Zygmunt Bauman (Modernity and the Holocaust) and Ernest Becker (Escape from Evil) have all contemplated the driving force of aggression and mass violence to further our understanding of how people are capable of engaging in extreme forms of cruelty and violence. This paper specifically addresses these issues by focusing on C. P. Taylor’s play Good. This provocative play examines how a seemingly ‘good’ and intelligent university professor can gradually become caught up in the workings of the Third Reich. Taylor highlights the importance of appreciating how people can be steadily incorporated into an ideologically destructive system. I argue that the theatre is a powerful medium to explore these complex issues. The audience of Good find themselves confronted with the following question - ‘What would you have done?

Dropping out and diving in-An ethnography of skydiving

This thesis provides an in-depth study of the world of skydiving. Particular attention is given to the experiences of becoming and being a skydiver in order to investigate the norms, values and behaviour that typify the social world of skydiving from the inside. This qualitative investigation draws on data generated by conducting fieldwork together with a number of in-depth interviews and describes the sequence of changes that typically occur in a skydiver's moral career. By focusing attention on the social and moral experiences involved in becoming a skydiver I reveal how the neophyte undergoes a gradual process of important transitions before becoming a licensed skydiver. This developmental approach identifies and analyses how individual conceptions and experiences of skydiving change as the neophyte is gradually immersed within the skydiving community. The inquiry considers the significant changes that occur in the ways that novice and experienced skydivers account for their participation before contrasting their perceptions of fear and risk. By describing the gradual process of socialisation that occurs I also examine how entering this social world offers the neophyte a chance to construct a desirable social identity. By investigating the complex stages and social procedures that take the complete neophyte to being a licensed skydiver this research looks beyond the immediacy of excitement and analyses the shifting motivations, behaviours and experiences of those within the skydiving community

Modern homes of Hardie\u27s "Fibrolite" : artistic, durable, fire retardant, economical

Includes designs and plans for home design numbers 302, 303, 304, 305, 306, 307, 309 and 311