Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Pretzel Logic

2014; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 18; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/1206331214532044

1552-8308

Jan Dutkiewicz,

Sports, Gender, and Society

Rock climbing entails far more than simply climbing rocks. Modern sport climbing is, rather, rooted in the myriad ways in which climbers engage with rock climbs, the specific human-made spaces mapped onto the cliff faces that athletes seek to ascend. This interaction includes forms of learning to read and create visual representations of climbs, physically training to prepare their bodies and hone their techniques, learning how to haptically and kinaesthetically engage with and learn from the rock, and overall developing a climbing-specific habitus. By exploring the relationship between a number of climbers and a climb in Rumney, New Hampshire, called Pretzel Logic, this article argues that the climb and climber are mutually constituted through a highly fluid actor–object engagement rooted in ongoing learning and adaptation. By extension, this article argues that interaction with objects—and not solely other humans—can be central to the formation of habitus and bodily practice.