Producing and Consuming the Snowboarding BodyThorpe’s Chapter 3 objectives • How is the snowboarding body “a malleable marker of commercial value subject to the fragmentation of the snowboarding market and the vagaries of fashion”? (p. 17) • Case studies (Burton Snowboards; female niche markets) to illustrate the processes of production and consumption of snowboarding bodies by owners, employees, pro athletes, various groups of cultural consumers (p. 17).• Interpreting snowboard culture using Marxist perspectives • Interpreting snowboard culture using ideas about post-FordismSnowboarding as a capitalist phenomenon • Marxist perspectives (accumulation, competition, exploitation) • Concept of class important to Marx’s analysis • High volume standardized mass production • Uses idea of the play-games-sport continuum; progress; “this is when it turns into a job” (Jeremy Jones in For Right or Wrong) • Pessimistic approach“Links between snowboarding culture and the capitalist system. . . yet serious questions about ability of Marx’s work to explain culture and cultural politics” (p. 47).Other ways to analyze production and consumption of snowboarding body Politics, ideology, culture • In some aspects of the political economy of snowboarding, “wealth derives not from ownership of the means of production, and control over wage labor, but from ownership of aesthetic ingenuity and the ability to create an mobilize cultural authenticity” (p. 62).Other ways to analyze production and consumption of snowboarding body Positive aspects of capitalism • “athletes are not passive cogs in sport’s commercial wheel” (p. 63). • Creativity, diversity, differentiation, fragmentation • There is a “significant cultural component” (p. 65).various cultural positions of snowboarding some “snowboarders still privilege culture and lifestyle over financial wealth” (p. 64). niche markets and lifestyles Is consumption a way to empowerment?Subcultures and “authenticity” are important to corporations, the market, the mainstream What is it to be an “individual”? How do we form our identities in today’s world? “things speak and we find our identity from consumption” (Dick Hebdige in Riding the Wave) “Are [companies] using their talent for good or evil?” (Bob Hurley in Riding the Wave)• Selected clips from Riding the Wave; and Jeremy Jones in For Right or Wrong: The Burton Movie illustrate the above dialectics of economy, consumption, cultural meanings • Next class meeting: Key theoretical concepts / ideas about production and