Non-/Seriousness: Playing the Game and Changing the Rules

Abstract

Like the simultaneous offensive and defensive strategy their sport demands, skaters seek serious recognition at the same time as troubling and somewhat refusing the terms of such recognition, and do so in practices that I have analyzed as non-/serious. Participants’ pursuit of serious recognition demonstrates that broader questions of gender and organization are at stake in a sociological approach to seriousness, as are understandings of the relations between voluntarism and determinism in the possibilities and limits of reflexive, deliberate collective action.

You know like the good old days when we had homemade t-shirts and things like that?

MB: Yeah!

I really embrace that and I really love that about our team and I think, I think it’s improved us as a team actually because we didn’t focus ever on being professional, [laughing] or on looking professional! We just focused on enjoying the game and playing it and improving, [laughing] … I think we focused on the right thing, and that really we showed that it really doesn’t matter what you look like you can be a really brilliant sportswoman on skates, so yeah I love that element of [league] and … I would just love forever if we could always be a little bit shambolic [both laughing] … I think it’s just a sense of who [league] are, I really do.

The Beefcake, individual interview, October 2010