Space and Sensibility
Young Men’s Risk-Taking with Motor Vehicles
Tanja Joelsson
Linköping Studies in Arts and Science Dissertations No. 574, 2013
Linköping Studies in Arts and Science, Dissertations No. 574, 2013 Department of Thematic Studies Unit of Gender Studies
Linköping University SE-581 83 Linköping
www.liu.se
Tanja Joelsson
Space and Sensibility
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Young Men’s Risk-T
aking with Motor V
ehicles
2013
Young men are often thought of as being the most dangerous car drivers, partly due to risk-taking practices such as speeding – a belief reiterated in public discussions and many policies on traffic safety. In general, hegemonic notions of youth hold it to be a life phase where living out and exploring life is vital, while young people are simultaneously cast as particularly problematic, either as risk-taking or “at risk”. What is meant by risk and risk-risk-taking in these contexts? And how do young people relate to and negotiate with these ambivalent discourses through practice?
This transdisciplinary ethnographic study explores the leisure activities of a group of young greasers, predominantly young men, who are interested in and oriented towards extensive motor vehicle use in a non-metropolitan community in Sweden, with special reference to their risk-taking practices with motor vehicles. Observations and interviews with the young greasers illuminate how issues of place, situatedness and crafting a socially sound and intelligible person within the greaser culture remain important aspects of how the young men negotiate their relation to the surrounding spatial and social environment through the practice of risk-taking with motor vehicles. The ethnographic material offers more complex insights into young men’s practices and use of motor vehicles than the narrow scope of traffic safety or transport studies have offered so far, and will therefore be of interest to researchers from various fields working on young people, place, mobility and gender, but also to others working with traffic safety in any capacity.
TANJA JOELSSON is a researcher at the Thematic Unit of Gender Studies (Tema Genus), the Department of Thematic Studies, Linköping University, Sweden. This is her doctoral thesis.
