Paul O’Connor - Skateboarding and Religion

Paul OConnor

Skateboarding and Religion

Paul OConnors Skateboarding and Religion is an exhilarating book; it is simultaneously a challenge to all mainstream ideas about religion and religious experience, and a rich and nuanced study of the religious dimensions of skateboarding. OConnor interrogates the origin myths of the sport, sketches portraits of the saints and mystics of the skateboarding world, profiles a diverse group of skaters from different geographical and religious contexts and offers a sophisticated reading of the aesthetics and symbolism used by skateboarders. The sacred spaces of the sport, the impulse for pilgrims to visit and engage with these sites, and the ritual dimensions of their activities are chronicled, and the text is enriched by images that make the phenomena discussed comprehensible for the reader. This original and joyous study is a major contribution to the study of contemporary religious and spiritual trends.

Carole M. Cusack, Professor of Religious Studies, University of Sydney, Australia

Through a sociologists nuanced analysis and a skateboarders commitment to the daring, Paul OConnor makes clear the often surprising religiosity that underpins skateboardings culture, industry, and even the act itself. This groundbreaking book will convince even the most stubbornly secular reader that skateboarding is something especially sacred in the modern world.

Christian N. Kerr, Writer and Editor at Jenkem Magazine

At once insightful, questioning and provocative, Paul OConnors Skateboarding and Religion takes two seemingly disconnected phenomena and shows how they are intrinsically inter-related. This massively original study will be of interest to anyone concerned with the sociology of skateboarding and other youthful practices. Very highly recommended.

Iain Borden, Professor of Architecture and Urban Culture, University College London, UK

In Skateboarding and Religion Paul OConnor provides a valuable expansion of the sport-religion relationship bound to impact multiple interdisciplinary audiences. Most works on sport and religion focus on team and commercial sports. OConnors work is unique in offering a much-needed analysis of religion in the neglected area of lifestyle sports. From the perspective of sporting subcultures, he crafts an innovative framework for understanding religion across multiple denominational, informal, commercial, geographical, and artistic practices.

Daniel A. Grano, Professor of Communication Studies, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, USA

A seductive synthesis of radically different genres, OConnors alchemy fuses the sociology of lifestyle sports with religious studies. This bold foray into the academic unknown requires a leap of faith which counters the notion of skateboarding as a culture of destructive iconoclasts. OConnors fresh accounting of this oft demonized subculture argues that the everyday lives of skaters disturbs the sacred profane dualism of classic notions of religion, and instead should be understood as a lifestyle religion. In this view, a shared ethos of progression, sacrifice, and most critically, ritual practice establishes a communitas that helps skaters make sense of themselves in a neo-liberal, fractured world. Hell yeah.

Gregory Snyder, Associate Professor of Sociology, City University of New York, USA

OConnor provides a theoretically rich and empirically grounded analysis of how people use skateboarding to meet many of the needs religion attends to: ritual practices, community, and spirituality. Arguing that skateboardings rise in popularity is, in part, a response to the human conditions of late modernity, OConnor contends that this response is effectively a lifestyle religion. Not only does Skateboarding and Religion contribute to the research on lifestyle sports, but importantly, extends the field of religion and popular culture.

Becky Beal, Professor of Kinesiology, California State University, USA

For the Pious