“The bionic man goes autoerotic – theoretic keys towards a refined understanding of men’s risk taking in public space”

Gender construction in relation to mobility and movement gives rise to intriguing questions regarding the interfaces between men, masculinity, technology, “danger” and risk-taking, especially when discussing issues of traffic safety. How can we conceptualize men’s risk taking practices within the traffic realm? By drawing on research from feminist science and technology studies, the authors suggest and develop the figuration the bionic man for how to understand cars and other mobile vehicles such as mopeds as extensions of the (male) body. The construction of masculinity is seen to be interlinked with the use and mastering of motor vehicles. This theoretical frame work is further analysed by introducing the concept of autoeroticism as a meaningful way for understanding the profound embodied and emotional relation between men, technologies of movement and risk taking. The authors argue that the emotional aspects of driving cars and riding mopeds need to be regarded as both vital and crucial aspects when studying men’s risk taking in traffic space.

Research on gender aims to contribute towards a better society with the help of scientific tools. Change is therefore a key concept in gender studies. With a wide range of theoretical frameworks, methodological approaches and empirical materials from Sweden, Norway and Iceland, this book investigates how gender relations are shaped, reproduced, and challenged. Collectively, the papers in this volume point to where we are heading in terms of gender relations. Where are the seeds to change, and how does power make possible or impede on change?

Att förstå hur genus görs i relation till mobilitet ställer spännande frågor om gränssnitten mellan män, maskuliniteter, ålder, teknik, -farlighet- och risktagande, inte minst i förhållande till trafiksäkerhet, våld och kroppslig integritet. Feministisk teknologiforskning (FTS) och transportforskning med genusperspektiv uppmärksammar hur bilar eller mopeder kan förstås som en förlängning av (mans)kroppen där kopplingen till görande av maskulinitet är sammanvävt med användandet och bemästrandet av motorfordon. Mot bakgrund av nollvisionen är det dock uppseendeväckande hur lite trafiksäkerhetsarbetet uppmärksammat överrepresentationen av män som -vållande- av dödsolyckor (90 %) eller uppmärksammat (auto)mobilitet som ett sätt att göra kön. Texten tar upp mäns kroppslighet i trafiken med utgångspunkt i feministiska teorier om våld och teknologi, och knyts samman med en diskussion kring (auto)mobilitet. Bidraget öppnar upp för en kritisk diskussion kring bilismens normativa ställning, inte minst hur bilnormativiteten formar och skapar subjektiva upplevelser och identitet, samt hur praktiker knutna till dessa möjliggör och producerar våldsam mobilitet.

In this article I discuss how the experience of boredom becomes a vital part of the narratives and practices of a group of young greasers in a peri-urban community in Sweden. The ethnographic material originates from fieldwork carried out among the local Volvo greasers, aged between 15 and 19 years, at the local youth centre and the car park in a peri-urban community in Sweden in 2010. The aim of the article is to understand how place, personhood and social relations are intertwined in the greaser culture by introducing the concept of spatial boredom, which strives to illuminate the greasers active engagement and negotiation with the experience of boredom. In light of this, the semantics of spatial boredom - the communitys geographical placement as boring, reactive rather than active, static rather than dynamic - a symbolic link to femininity, domesticity, safety, routine and hence immanence is established. The orientation towards a dangerous, masculine-coded public space is reinforcing a split between both the feminine and the masculine and the public and the private.

In this paper I explore how the concept and experience of boredom becomes a vital part of the narratives and practices of young vehicle and neighbourhood oriented men and women – the greasers – in a periurban community in Sweden. How can the boredom they express and experience in relation to their (risk-taking) practices as well as to the social geography of their peers be understood from a feminist theoretical perspective? In which ways do they use boredom as an in-group strategy and how is boredom linked to (out-group) social identity? How are gender, age and place entangled in the social construction of boredom?

Keeping in mind Dalle Pezze & Salzani’s (2009) important note that boredom in fact lies at the center of contemporary society and should therefore be of vital importance for theorists concerned with theorizing society, I want to broaden the scope in order to understand why boredom has become a viable feeling and experience of young males (most notably in their teens or young adulthood) by bringing together de Beauvoir’s concepts immanence and transcendence, Ziehe’s understanding of  the need for potentiating the banality of existence and Stephen Lyng’s concept of edgework (voluntary risk-taking). At a more theoretical level I argue that the (for the most part negative) depictions of boredom in research do not take into account the complex ways feelings and experiences of boredom can be used as a social and cultural resource among young people. My aim is then to use and in some ways revise de Beauvoir’s, Ziehe’s and Lyng’s theoretical contributions by specifically addressing boredom as a backdrop for my research subject’s practices. In this theoretical endeavor, I critically address how the cultural and social construction of boredom and masculinity are tightly intertwined.

The ethnographic material I draw upon in this paper originates from the fieldwork I carried out in a periurban community, Samplinge, in Sweden in year 2010. The field work consisted of participant observation of regular visitors aged between 15 to 18 years old (fifteen boys and seven girls) at the local youth center and a central meeting place in the community in the evenings – the local shop’s entrance courtyard – as well as six group interviews and twelve individual interviews with the same visitors. These visitors are known as the local greasers. I have also conducted what I call ride alongs where I have been a passenger in some of the greasers’ cars. Also, seventeen pupils from grade nine in the local high school – not regular visitors of the youth center – were interviewed, in groups of two (thirteen interviews) or individually (four interviews). All in all thirty five interviews have been executed. 

In this article the author discusses how the experience of boredom becomes a vital part of the narratives and practices of a group of young greasers in a peri-urban community in Sweden. The greasers’ risk-taking practices with vehicles (drifting and speeding) can be understood in a more nuanced way by introducing boredom as an analytical tool, intersected with an analysis of conceptions and norms around gender, age and place. Boredom is understood to be a material resource for the young people to draw upon and can be analysed as a discursive spatial strategy, denoting the greasers active engagement with an experienced boredom that is both imposed upon them externally and (re)created by themselves.

Understanding boredom in the way outlined above breaks with the colloquial and scholarly understanding, where boredom is most commonly depicted as a negative mental state of specific individuals (most of the psychological research goes under this rubric) or as a negative condition of Western postmodern societies (most of the sociological, philosophical and literary research can be placed here). Rather than perceiving and conceptualising boredom as an inherent spatial characteristic, boredom is negotiated in relation to place. From this angle, the greasers engage with the stereotypical notion of their community as boring and backwards by creating a counter image. The greasers take action, quite literally, against the notion of a backward and boring rurality enforced upon them and their community, by claiming and occupying public space and by practicing risk taking with their vehicles.

A large part of how the young expressed themselves around drifting or speeding is all about “having fun”. “To have fun” is for the greasers intertwined with perceptions and experiences of boredom in two distinctive ways: a) when you have fun in the right way (with vehicles or by joking about accidents) you can opt for a greaser identity which per definition is non-boring and b) this fun-loving identity makes it possible to use boredom as a resource where risk-taking appears to be the ”natural” outcome – which in turn function to remedy experiences of boredom.

At a more theoretical level, the discursive spatial strategies are discussed in relation to dominant and normative forms of masculinity. Analysing the risk-taking practices as violations in a much broader sense than the narrow scope of traffic violations, permit a framework that can be connected to the reproduction of (affective) inequality. Within this framework, boredom is understood as a discursive spatial strategy that re-create intersectional power differences related to age, gender and place. To be more specific, the discourse on boredom upholds dominant and normative forms of masculinity by appropriating public space (and thus distancing oneself from the femininized private space) and exercising and encouraging violations with vehicles.

The ethnographic material I draw upon in this paper originates from the fieldwork I carried out in a periurban community, Samplinge, in Sweden in year 2010. The fieldwork consisted of participant observation of regular visitors aged between 15 to 18 years old (fifteen boys and seven girls) at the local youth center and a central meeting place in the community in the evenings – the local shop’s entrance courtyard – as well as six group interviews and twelve individual interviews with the same visitors. These visitors are known as the local greasers. I have also conducted what I call ride alongs where I have been a passenger in some of the greasers’ cars. Also, seventeen pupils from grade nine in the local high school – not regular visitors of the youth center – were interviewed, in groups of two (thirteen interviews) or individually (four interviews). All in all thirty five interviews have been executed.

I denna etnografiska studie av "Volvoraggare" i ett stadsnära samhälle i Sverige undersöks risktagande praktiker med motorfordon, såsom fortkörning och sladdande, och analyseras i förhållande till ålder, kön, klass och plats. Unga mäns risktagande med motorfordon genererar ofta offentlig debatt som en trafiksäkerhetsfråga, vilket har resulterat i olika politiska förslag som t.ex. utegångsförbud eller höjning av körkortsåldern. Sällan är dessa föreslagna lösningar baserade på kritisk etnografisk forskning där intersektioner av ålder, kön, klass och plats studeras. Studien är baserad på etnografiskt fältarbete, det vill säga deltagande observation och informella och formella intervjuer med unga raggare, män och kvinnor, i åldern 15 till 19, samt intervjuer med elever från det lokala högstadiet och med personal på den lokala fritidsgården.

Studien har två övergripande syften. Det första syftet med studien är empiriskt: att synliggöra ett understuderat område av samtida ungdomskultur i Sverige --‐ (Volvo) raggare. För att förstå hur raggarnas risktagande med fordon manifesteras, talas om och praktiseras, diskuterar avhandlingen kontexten för och effekterna av de risktagande praktikerna på materiell och diskursiv nivå. Det andra syftet är teoretiskt. Med hjälp av kontextualisering som ett analytiskt verktyg är ett av avhandlingens teoretiska bidrag en vidareutveckling av risktagande som ett situerat begrepp. Avhandlingen visar hur normer och föreställningar kring ålder, kön, klass och plats praktiseras på lokal nivå och belyser därmed de risktagande praktikernas sociala karaktär. Ett centralt analytiskt begrepp för att förstå raggarnas förhandling med plats är rumslig tristess, vilket påverkar deras konstruktion av personskap och deras sociala praktiker. Mot bakgrund av detta föreslår avhandlingen att situerat risktagande med motorfordon bör omformuleras som kränkningar, vilket ytterligare skulle utveckla förståelsen av ungdomars risktagande praktiker med motorfordon och bana väg för en mer mångfacetterad diskussion inom såväl teori som inom trafiksäkerhetspraktik och ‐politik.