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

Tales from the Drop Zone: roles, risks and dramaturgical dilemmas

This paper critically revisits conventional understandings of ethnographic fieldwork roles, arguing that representations of the covert insider as heroic and adventurous are often idealistic and unrealistic. Drawing on one of the authors’ experiences of being both a covert and overt researcher in an ethnographic study of skydiving, we identify some of the dramaturgical dilemmas that can unexpectedly affect relations with participants throughout the research process. Our overall aim is to highlight how issues of trust, betrayal, exposure and vulnerability, together with the practical considerations of field research, combine to shape the researcher’s interactional strategies of identity work

Necessary Illusions: Life, Death and the Construction of Meaning

This paper introduces the work of the late cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker. Becker argued that the cause of human suffering is directly related to the strategies people use to cope with their mortality awareness. By concentrating on his last two books, The Denial of Death (1973) and Escape from Evil (1975), the aim of this paper is to provide an overview of Becker&rsquo;s mature theory to show how his work on destructiveness is necessary for developing a socially engaged social theory. Whilst his theory on the human condition explores some of the darkest aspects of human existence, by examining why people are capable of extreme forms of cruelty Becker directly encouraged an honest dialogue concerning our existential predicament. This paper highlights the necessity of Becker&rsquo;s theory of evil for opening up new possibilities for living in a more humane world. Este art&iacute;culo presenta el trabajo del antrop&oacute;logo cultural Ernest Becker. Becker argument&oacute; que la causa del sufrimiento humano est&aacute; directamente relacionada con las estrategias que usan las personas para hacer frente a su conciencia de mortalidad. Analizando sus dos &uacute;ltimos libros, La negaci&oacute;n de la muerte (1973) y La lucha contra el mal (1975), el objetivo de este art&iacute;culo es ofrecer una visi&oacute;n general de la teor&iacute;a madura de Becker para demostrar c&oacute;mo su estudio sobre la destructividad es necesario para desarrollar una teor&iacute;a social socialmente comprometida. A pesar de que su teor&iacute;a sobre la condici&oacute;n humana explora algunos de los aspectos m&aacute;s oscuros de la existencia humana, Becker directamente fomenta un di&aacute;logo honesto sobre nuestro predicamento existencial, examinando por qu&eacute; las personas son capaces de formas extremas de crueldad. Este art&iacute;culo destaca la necesidad de la teor&iacute;a de Becker del mal, para facilitar nuevas posibilidades de vivir en un mundo m&aacute;s humano. DOWNLOAD THIS PAPER FROM SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2619408</p

Transcendence, symbolic immortality and evil

Ernest Becker’s work addresses the implications that arise from being aware of our own mortality. Like Sartre, Becker recognises that human beings have the potential to transcend and look beyond their immediate situation, but his work also confronts the darker aspects of human existence that arise from our selfawareness. The aim of the paper is to provide an overview of Becker’s work and to show the potential of Becker’s theory of evil to inform a number of contemporary debates in the social sciences. Although Becker’s work directly examines why human beings can act so inhumanly towards one another, his theory is not altogether pessimistic. The paper concludes by arguing that Becker’s theory intended to create new possibilities for living in more creative and humane world

Flow, enjoyment and high-risk autotelic experiences

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