Skate and create/skate and destroy: The commercial and

governmental incorporation of skateboarding

Kara-Jane Lombard
*
School of MCCA, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia
During the 1970s and 1980s skateboarding was variously construed as a childrens
activity, a fad, or underground activity. More recently there has been a trend to consider
skateboarding as respectable as it is increasingly incorporated into commercial and
governmental processes. Yet despite the fact that it has been so incorporated into the
mainstream, the theme of resistance continues to strongly resonate with skateboarding.
This article develops an account of the incorporation of skateboarding which
demonstrates that purely oppositional or resistive readings of skateboarding are
problematic. Such an account demonstrates that commercial incorporation is not simply
a case of gentrication, corruption or exploitation as some instances of incorporation are
supported and resistance has a constitutive role in shaping incorporation. Similarly,
governmental programs, strategies and technologies arise out of a complex eld of
contestation in which resistance does not operate outside of rule but is involved in
actively shaping and altering the governmental incorporation of skateboarding.
Introduction
A consistent theme in the examination of skateboarding culture has been that of resistance.
As sport sociologist Becky Beal (1992) writes, skateboarding displays several
characteristics and symbols which can be regarded as resistant (1992, 6). The concept of
resistance was formulated most notably in the early development of cultural studies by the
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at Birmingham. Employing a critical
European Marxist approach, and Gramscis model of hegemony and counterhegemony, the
CCCS sought to analyse social and cultural domination and subordination, seeking forces of
resistance and struggle. As John Clarke, Stuart Hall, Tony Jefferson and Brian Roberts
explain in Resistance through rituals: hegemonic cultures, however, are never free to
reproduce and amend themselves without contradiction and resistance (1976, 66). Thus
youth subcultures were read as symbolically formulated utopian proposals for alternative
solutions, and thus as germs of resistance towards power structures (Fornas 1995, 105).
The subcultural studies of the CCCS seem to have heavily inuenced academic
discussions of skateboarding. Many theorists see skateboarding as a symbolic form of
resistance directed towards various targets mainstream social values, authorities,
corporate culture, space and so on. Skate academic Iain Borden writes: skateboarding,
like other subcultures, attempts to separate itself from groups such as the family, to be
oppositional, appropriative of the city, irrational in organisation, ambiguous in consti-
tution, independently creative of its marginal or sub status (2001, 139). However,
previous scholarship on skateboarding which engages with it as resistive tends to situate
ISSN 1030-4312 print/ISSN 1469-3666 online
q 2010 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/10304310903294713
http://www.informaworld.com
*Email: k.lombard@curtin.edu.au
Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies
Vol. 24, No. 4, August 2010, 475488
resistance on the outside (Lorr n.d.; Beal 1992; Borden 1998, 2001). Thus resistance is
demarcated from whatever it happens to be resisting mainstream social values (Beal
1992, iii), the norms and values of competition, instrumentalism, respect for authority, and
the acceptance of unequal and exclusive positions (iv), traditional masculine behaviour
(iv), corporate culture (Lorr n.d., 10), spatial politics (Borden 1998, para. 5) or safety and
behavioural standards (Borden 2001, 133).
Demarcating resistance from its target is problematic. As Michel Foucault has stated:
resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power (1976/1990, 95). While
the CCCS has come to be criticized for essentializing resistance, Foucault developed a
more specic model of power relations. One of the problems with the subcultural model is
its assumption of a simple dichotomy between the subcultures and the mainstream. This
division led to an over-simplication of resistance and incorporation which positioned
subcultures as inherently resistant or oppositional. Not only does resistance shape
incorporation but evidence shows contemporary skaters are not necessarily attracted to
resistance.
While Beal describes skateboarding in terms of resistance, her work does hint at a
formative role of resistance. As she points out:
skaters opposed dominant norms less intentionally by re-dening them. Skaters use of public
structures for their own needs is one example. Skaters also re-dened the CSA sponsored
competitions as a means to exclusive positions by demanding and creating them as inclusive,
as a place for everyone to skate. (Beal 1992, 146)
Interestingly, Borden (1998, 159) nds that
skateboarders have also tried to resist the commodication of skateboarding by, curiously,
returning to mainstream products and rejecting skateboarder-targeted products. The logic here
is a complex one, and is predicated once again on the need for a subcultural identity to remain
apart from normative lifestyles.
This indicates that resistance is very much implicated in shaping the incorporation of
skateboarding.
This article begins by exploring the role of resistance in the commercial incorporation
of skate through the term extreme by considering the advent of the X Games. To
demonstrate that not only are some instances of incorporation supported but also that
resistance has a role in shaping incorporation, it then examines the resistance to extreme
as well as resistance to notions of resistance in skate culture. The involvement of major
corporations like Nike through sponsorship and endorsements is also analysed. This
counters a purely oppositional and resistive reading of skateboarding which considers its
incorporation in terms of exploitation and a loss of authenticity. The second half of the
article considers the governmental incorporation of skateboarding by exploring various
strategies for governing skateboarding and addressing the role of contestation, resistance
and other programs in the formulation and implementation of governmental programs.
This is to demonstrate that governmental programs, strategies and technologies arise out of
a complex eld of contestation, and that resistance does not operate outside of rule but is
involved in actively shaping and altering the governmental incorporation of
skateboarding.
Commercial incorporation
Mainstream corporations rst began to show interest in skateboarding in the late 1970s.
Previously, sponsors of skateboarding events and individual skaters were skate-related
companies. By the late 1970s major companies like Pepsi and Swatch began sponsoring
476 K.-J. Lombard
riders and contests, and in the 1980s television networks began successfully organizing
their own extreme sport events. Extreme rst gained currency in the early 1990s as a
marketing term referring to a range of sports such as skateboarding, BMX, FMX and
snowboarding. The term captured the fact that they were not organized or competitive like
other sports and were generally positioned outside the mainstream, rendering them
somewhat resistive. The term became solidied with the advent of the inaugural ESPN
Extreme Games held in July 1995, a competitive event for a variety of extreme sports
which heralded the mainstreaming and mass commercialization of skateboarding.
In 1996, ESPN renamed the event the X Games. While the network claimed it was to
allow for easier translation to international audiences and better branding opportunities
(Hattori 1998, para. 28), the term was beginning to become an unpopular appellation.
As Joel Stein (1998, 8) writes: the games have been rechristened from the original
Extreme Games, because extreme has come to signify desperate marketing tool. Now
they gently allude to Generation X, which also means desperate marketing tool. Ron
Semiao, originator of the X Games, acknowledged that the word extreme has become
somewhat of a cliche, and we dont want it to be, you know, going out of vogue. I think it
already is out of vogue now. I think we changed just in time (Hattori 1998, para. 28).
Despite this, the term has continued to be popular with corporations hoping to cash in on
the popularity of the extreme phenomenon. As ex-professional street skater Ocean Howell
(2003, para. 12) writes:
there is now Extreme Pizza in my neighborhood. Nissan sells an suv called the X-Tra. For
those who are edgy and concerned that they smell, there is now Extreme Deoderant [sic ].
There are rms that offer Extreme Consulting. One can read about Extreme Investing in
online publications. There is even a mutual fund called Synergy Extreme Canadian Equity
Fund.
In recent years there has been a backlash against extreme in skateboarding culture. In the
words of Sean Holland (2003, 12), editor of Australian Skateboarding Magazine:
after witnessing a heated debate about what dened extreme, I was left to ponder when and
where did skateboarding cop the bastardisation of being an extreme sport? Obviously it had a
hell of a lot to do with a bunch of money hungry executives.
Hollands criticism of extreme as a marketing tool reiterates the common argument that
corporate sponsorship has altered the meanings of skateboarding. He goes on to say: its
our duty to turn back the clocks and abolish the words extreme and athlete from the
skateboarding vocabulary (12). As Holland indicates, the term extreme has less to do
with the nature of skateboarding and more to do with the various extreme events that
render skaters athletes.
While the television networks extreme events made skateboarding hugely popular,
they also tended to exploit the skaters participating in these events. In fact, some skaters
refer to the X Games as the Exploitation Games. In their discussion of the Vans Warped
Tour, which converges SkatePunk music and extreme sports, Timothy Dowd, Kathleen
Liddle, and Jenna Nelson nd that commercial interests exacerbate tensions within the
SkatePunk scene, threatening its core values (2004, 158), and that many who work on the
tour barely break even (159). As skater and Toy Machine founder Ed Templeton (n.d.,
paras. 434) says:
corporations are digging their hands into what we make our lives out of. Our lives are
skateboarding we live it and we love it and its ours, and to have these companies come in
and just throw a bunch of money at it and then get some advertising out of it is kind of bad. It
seems bad, it feels bad a lot of times, because its not their blood and sweat that made
skateboarding what it is its ours.
Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 477
It is interesting that so many skaters would take what Tyler Cowen calls the cultural
pessimist line, considering the market economys effect on skateboarding as negative,
when so many have turned professional.
The extreme phenomenon has had some positive effects, however. Templeton may be
critical of the X Games, but he does acknowledge that mainstream incorporation of skate
has yielded benets that were not possible prior to its inclusion in the commercial
entertainment circuit:
as a businessman, its great because I run a company and its so big that were selling a lot of
boards and I make good money out of it. Toy Machine does well, so its also good cuz the
more boards we sell, the more I can hook-up my riders and thats great. Im sure theyre
happy, cuz skateboardings big and theres actually room for them to become a pro on Toy
Machine so that we can pay them good salaries, send them lots of places and run lots of ads of
them. (para. 41)
While accounts of skateboarding tend to construct an oppositional and resistive reading,
considering the incorporation of skate in terms of a loss of authenticity, skaters themselves
are not completely against the commercial incorporation of skateboarding. As Swedish
skater Tony Magnusson (n.d., para. 3) notes, the commercialization of skateboarding has
some positives, skaters are making more money . . . [and] have a lot of control over the
commercialization. Pro skater Jamie Thomas (1998, 148) explains that the
commercialization of skateboarding has generated a burgeoning interest which has
resulted in more money for professionals. However, he states that the contests have
sponsors that Im personally not into supporting. Im not into how corny and overdone
everything is either (148).
While the nancial sustainability of skateboarding requires skaters to compromise their
control over this activity and its representations, skateboarding has a complex relationship
with commercial culture. In 2001, skateboarders formed their own union of sorts when
skaters at that years X Games were told they would have to sign a contract in which they
agreed to no compensation for an IMAX movie featuring the Games. The day before the
event was to take place, the United Professional Skateboarders Association (UPSA)
released a statement to the press demanding that the IMAX clause be removed. An hour
before the rst practice, UPSAmembers convinced every skater to refuse to participate. The
clause was removed and soon afterwards new agreements were also drawn up for athletes
participating in NBCs Gravity Games. In 2002 Andy Macdonald, who spearheaded the
formation of the UPSA, received presentations from the National Football League Players
Association on health insurance, athlete services, and retirement plans for skaters.
A major inuence in understandings of the relationship between subcultures and
commercial culture has been Dick Hebdige. In his study of subculture in post-war Britain,
Hebdige considered the subversive implications of style by considering the meaning of
revolt and the idea of style as a form of Refusal by investigating the subcultures of the
teddy boys, mods, rockers, skinheads and punks (1979, 2). Concerned with resistance
through style, Hebdige seems to indicate that resistance is futile once a subculture is
incorporated, arguing that: the creation and diffusion of new styles is inextricably bound
up with the processes of production, publicity and packaging which must inevitably lead to
the diffusion of the subcultures subversive power (95). He concludes that: youth cultural
styles may begin by issuing symbolic challenges, but they must inevitable end by
establishing new sets of conventions (96).
As the 2001 X Games prove, not only are some instances of incorporation supported
but resistance is formative it shapes the commercial incorporation of skate. Clearly this
was a positive outcome, but had it not been for the commercial protability and
478 K.-J. Lombard
mainstream success of skateboarding the skaters would have continued to be exploited. It
is also interesting to note that the skaters involved in the X Games were not completely
opposed to commercial incorporation simply an instance of exploitative
commercialization.
A further example which shows the complex relationship that skateboarding has with
commercial culture involves sponsorship and endorsements. While sponsorship and
endorsements are utilized to engender authenticity, these attempts are not always
successful. One instance is Nikes efforts to obtain entry to the subculture of
skateboarding. Nike rst entered the skateboarding market in the late 1990s, releasing a
skate shoe accompanied by humorous advertisements on television and in magazines such
as Rolling Stone and Sports Illustrated. Despite winning numerous advertising awards, the
commercials did not translate into prots because skaters were suspicious of Nike.
As Wheaton and Beals 2003 study into commercialization and skateboarding found,
skaters were concerned about Nikes motivation because there was not a long-standing
commitment to the skateboarding community (2003, 169). Consolidated Skateboards
even led a boycott against Nike with their Dont Do It campaign. The shoe was
withdrawn after a little more than a year.
Recent research into the impacts of branding and commercialization on the Australian
indie music festival scene provides a useful comparison. In her study, Joanne Cummings
notes that indie music has been highly idealized and constructed by fans, musicians and
journalists as non-commercial. This myth has been further problematized by the ongoing
commercialization of indie music festivals in recent times (2008, 675). Her research
reveals that the commercial sponsorship of the festival scene has advantages and
disadvantages and that the experience-enhancement techniques used by sponsors and
event organizers have benets, but not all instances are successful. These ndings are
similar to those on the commercialization of skateboarding. For example, an investigation
into the early processes of incorporation through sponsorship of skateboarding culture
reveals that, while companies were obviously utilizing skateboarding for economic gain,
corporate interest helped maintain the subculture during an uncertain time in its
development.
According to Cummings (2008), one way in which indie festival organizers can lessen
the impact of commercialization is to participate in boundary work. As organizers make
decisions about who can attend, what type of music will be included, what bands to include
and the number and the type of sponsors, the boundary work they perform plays a major
role in balancing the festivals perceived authenticity among scene members.
A correlation can be drawn here to Nikes second entry into the market in 2000. While
the previous advertising campaign had aimed to show that Nike understood skateboarding,
by featuring police chasing golfers, runners and tennis players with the tag line what if we
treated all athletes the way we treat skateboarders?, in 2000 Nikes attitude
had completely changed. As Nike pro skater Richard Mulder (cited in Robertson 2004,
43) explains: they approached us from a place of humility . . . they didnt pretend to
know it all.
This campaign included selling exclusively to independent shops, advertising only in
skate magazines and sponsoring pro skaters (43). Nike also committed to the project for at
least ve years and included skaters in the design process (43). This boundary work
conveyed an authenticity to Nike lessening its negative commercial image. Nikes entry
into the skateboarding market demonstrates the trend of market relations with
skateboarding evolving towards strategic alliances which involve a more collaborative
relationship with skateboarding. Not only are companies able to reap greater prots from
Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 479
such partnerships but this development means that resistance is potentially able to further
shape instances of incorporation.
Resistance to resistance
In recent times there has also been something of a backlash against notions of
resistance in skate culture. There has been a tendency in academic writings on
skateboarding to prioritize resistance, but this is not necessarily foremost in the minds
of skateboarders. Sociology scholar and skater Mike Lorr (n.d., 2) argues that
mainstream and commercial culture are attracted to skateboarding because it is resistive
or subversive; however, the commodication of skateboarding through the Extreme
Games has produced a generation of skaters who are not attracted to its oppositional
identity. As skater David Snow (1999, 25) remarks in his study of Melbourne
skateboarding, while street skating does transgress normative understandings of how
city space should be used, it is not motivated by the often idealized resistance which
plagues some subcultural analyses. This is conrmed by a review of skateboarding
magazines. For example, Barry Farquars article concerning a trip to Tasmania in the
March 2003 issue of Australian Skateboarding magazine states that unfortunately
prime real estate and kids having fun dont mix (32). Such commentary suggests that
skaters are more concerned with having fun than resistance. Nicholas Nolan (2003,
312) concurs: much of the attraction of skateboarding is the freedom and emphasis on
self-expression, self-discipline and having fun. This counters understandings of
skateboarding as purely resistive.
As this account of the commercial incorporation of skate demonstrates, skateboarding
has a complex relationship with commercial culture. Skaters are not completely against
the commercial incorporation of skateboarding. At the same time there has been resistance
to some instances of commercial incorporation, although resistance is not necessarily
foremost in the minds of skaters. This resistance, however, is not outside of incorporation
but plays a formative role shaping instances of incorporation. Thus purely oppositional
or resistive readings of skateboarding are problematic.
Governmental incorporation
Government intervention into skate has been primarily through legislation and building
skateparks; however, the governance of skateboarding varies from city to city, country to
country it is sanctioned in some places, outlawed in others. For instance, as Steve Justice
points out in an article for Slam magazine in December 2004, in Australia nes are more
popular in Sydney, while in Melbourne compliance ofcers prefer to give skateboarders
warnings (33). Borden (2001) has also noted varying responses to skateboarding. He
explains that
while some parts of the world, notably Tasmania, Brisbane and Melbourne have recently
begun to actively encourage skateboarding in certain parts of the city, the more general pattern
of anti-skate legislation has been repeated worldwide, whether in Australia, Sweden, the
Netherlands, Brazil, Canada and so on. (251)
Borden adds: legislature directed at skateboarding is perhaps then not so much concerned
with a crime as with nding ever new ways for the conventionalized operations of the
society to be legitimized (257). However, in America skateboarding ordinances are much
more repressive than in Australia. While many US cities have banned skateboarding, most
capital cities in Australia do not have restrictive legislation of any kind.
480 K.-J. Lombard
Governmental incorporation of skateboarding is not as well developed as that of
similar youth practices like grafti, and certainly skate is dealt with in a much less
stringent manner. Perhaps this is because skateboarding has always had a legitimate
aspect it is a form of transport as well as a recreational activity. As Nicholas Nolan
(2003, 320) puts it:
the recognition that skateboarding is a legitimate mode of transport and source of recreation
for young people complicates the transgression label because it creates a distinction between
good skateboarding and bad skateboarding that cannot be accommodated by total bans.
Furthermore, the illegal aspect of skateboarding (either trespassing or the damage it can
cause) often occurs on private property, and skaters are able to traverse private and public
spaces quite rapidly. Thus it seems that much of the governance of skateboarding is
exercised privately through security guards.
While purely resistive readings of skateboarding are increasingly problematic, the
most apparent instance of resistance in contemporary skateboarding occurs in relation to
the gure of the security guard (Admin 2008; Brink 2005; Long 2006). Security guards are
seen as less skilled than police (Long 2006, 91) and tend to be more ubiquitous in the
spaces skaters occupy. It is interesting that while, on the one hand, skaters recognize that
security guards have no real power they hassle, they lecture, they even try to relate. But
in the end all they can do is call the real police (Jacang Maher 2004, 102) the most
agreed upon target of resistance in the subculture is the security guard. Borden writes that
the most coordinated resistance occurs in campaigns such as Stop Skate Harassment or
skateboarding is not a crime (2001, 258), and a review of skateboarding magazines and
websites demonstrates that these popular slogans are most often directed at security
guards. For example, New Zealand skateboarding company Narcotic positions itself
against the overweight power hungry security guards . . . because skateboarding is not a
crime (Narcotic Skateboards New Zealand 2009, para. 1).
Private policing of skateboarding entrenches the resistive elements of skateboarding as
skaters try to outwit security guards. This private crime control allows skaters to
proliferate tactics of resistance, and skaters have developed far more strategies for dealing
with security guards than police. Skaters resist security guards in various ways arguing,
playing cat and mouse games, or knowing the rounds of security guards. One
increasingly popular method involves lming altercations between skaters and security
guards, which are then posted to Internet sites. Comments on these videos deride or
criticize security guards and celebrate the outlaw ethos of skateboarding.
Because measures against individual skateboarders are so ineffective, and skaters
transgress the boundaries between public and private spaces, thereby making them
difcult to govern, there is an increasing tendency to focus on new ways of dealing with
the criminogenic situation a term that has come into existence for the purposes of
knowledge and government (Garland 1997, 187). In the words of Nicholas Rose and
Mariana Valverde (1998, 549), it is now possible to govern not the individual offender but
the criminogenic situation: a set of routines of everyday life distributed within specic
kinds of space the shopping mall, for example, or the public park. David Garland
explains that criminogenic situations take
a variety of forms and come in all shapes and sizes; unsupervised car-parks, town squares, late
at night, deserted neighbourhoods, poorly-lit streets, shopping malls, football games, bus
stops, subway stations, etc. Their status as more or less criminogenic as hot spots of crime
or low-rate, secure areas are established by reference to local police statistics, victim
surveys and crime pattern analysis. (1997, 187)
Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 481
Garland (188) states that in the eld of crime control there operates an uneven, and often
incoherent, combination of the three practicable objects and three forms of exercising
power in respect of them, the specic mix depending upon the balance of power
between the different groups involved. In skateboarding, it is the criminogenic situation
that is privileged. Legislation has always attempted to deal with the criminogenic situation
in some way banning skateboarding in certain areas, at certain times and so on. Yet this
legislation still takes as its focus the individual attempting to conform or correct the
individual through prosecution.
The attention to new ways of governing skateboarding through the criminogenic
situation has resulted in unliveable facilities and spaces similar to those which Mike
Davis (1990) discusses in relation to the homeless in Los Angeles. In the words of Borden
(2001, 254):
where the homeless are ejected from business and retail areas by such measures as curved bus
benches, window-ledge spikes and doorway sprinkler systems, so skaters encounter rough
textured surfaces, spikes and bumps added to handrails, blocks of concrete placed at the foot
of banks, chains across ditches and steps, and new, unridable surfaces such as gravel and sand.
Such a strategy is generally seen as more effective than focusing on governing individuals
in relation to skateboarding. In the City of Perth Skateboarding in the City Strategy (City
of Perth 2002) document, the City identied a range of locations where skateboarding was
perceived to be a signicant problem, such as the Supreme Court gardens, Central Park
gardens, Stock Exchange forecourt, Mercedes College, Forrest Place, Victoria Gardens
and residential areas (1). The report claimed that, some prevention success has been
achieved by modifying existing features to make them incompatible with skateboarding
(6), including the addition of stainless steel knobs on features used for sliding, grooves in
surfaces and rough, and uneven surfaces below obstacles that skaters jump off (6).
It recommended that the City identify skateable features and promote modications where
appropriate. Similarly, under the Melbourne Skate Safe program, the streets have been
altered in an attempt to make targeted areas frequented by skateboarders skate-proof.
Within Melbourne, devices such as the skate plate have been installed by the City of
Melbourne and property managers in an effort to stop skateboarders skating (Snow 1999,
22), such as along the stairs of the State Library of Victoria. Similarly, Federation Squares
cobblestones are designed to discourage skateboarding, but skaters can be found
grinding
1
coping (capping; the highest course on a masonry wall) across the street.
Governance and resistance
While there is a tendency in governmentality literature to ignore the role of resistance or
contestation (OMalley, Weir, and Shearing 1997, 513; Dean and Hindess 1998, 15), Pat
OMalley, Lorna Weir and Clifford Shearings article Governmentality, criticism,
politics (1997) is a particularly important reference in addressing the formulation and
implementation of governmental programs and the role of contestation, resistance and
other programs in this process. They note that there is a tendency in governmentality
literature to separate out programmes from the processes of their messy
implementation, and the related silencing of the constitutive role of contestation (512).
Furthermore, they add that many programmes exist only in the process of messy
implementation (513).
To this end, it is necessary to give attention to how programs for dealing with
skateboarding have been formulated and implemented. According to Mitchell Dean,
programmes or programmes of conduct are all the attempts to regulate, reform,
482 K.-J. Lombard
organize and improve what occurs within regimes of practices in the name of a specic set
of ends articulated with different degrees of explicitness and cogency (1999, 32). Peter
Miller and Nicholas Rose (1990, 14) point out that governmental programs are idealized
schema for ordering of social and economic life, which presuppose that the real is
programmable (Rose and Miller 1992, 183). The literature on governmental programs is
signicant because it reveals that government is a congenitally failing operation, since the
formulation and implementation of programs do not always go according to plan.
One of the reasons why programs do not always go according to plan is that programs,
strategies and technologies arise out of a complex eld of contestation (Rose 1999, 275).
However, in governmentality literature there is a tendency to see programmes as if they
are written by one hand, rather than multivocal, internally contested and this is, in a sense,
always in change and often internally contradictory (OMalley, Weir and Shearing 1997,
513). This is clearly a problem as Rose (1999) writes in relation to madness, governance
is inscribed by many voices. He states:
individuals and organizations who have criticized and contested the government of madness,
and the truths upon which it has rested, have played key roles in conguring the ways in which
madness is governed today, and this includes, of course, the subjects of government
themselves. (278)
To consider the multivocal and internally contested nature of programs in relation to
skateboarding, the case of Perth in Western Australia will rst be explored.
While the Perth skateboarding scene is often overlooked by skateboarders, in the
July/August 2004 issue of Australian Skateboarding Magazine (ASM) the cover asked:
Perth: Australias next skate Mecca? As Morgan Campbell wrote in this ASM article,
being undercover leaves the Perth skate scene with a pure essence, free from the vibes and
complications that come with sponsorship and media (2004, 39). Campbell then
explained that in the Perth central business district (CBD), you wont nd the vast marble
plazas of Sydney or Melbourne, but you will nd uncapped ledges and rails (40).
It was in response to this skating on uncapped ledges and rails, mostly on private
property, that led to the 2002 City of Perth document Skateboarding in the City Strategy
being developed. The report claimed that throughout the summer months the City of Perth
receives numerous complaints from ratepayers concerned about skateboarders (City of
Perth 2002, 1) particularly in relation to property damage. This was a signicant problem
for the City of Perth since some of the complaints came from corporations which,
according to the Youth Development Ofcer at the time, contribute a signicant
percentage of the Citys overall rates (R. Trowbridge, pers. comm. 28 November 2002).
The Skateboarding in the City Strategy (City of Perth 2002, 2) report suggested a
number of possible strategies for the City of Perth in relation to skateboarding, including
promoting existing skateboarding facilities outside the CBD, promoting existing penalties,
reclassication of footpaths, modifying existing public space and features to deter and/or
accommodate skateboarding where appropriate, established skateboarding times,
construction of inner-city purpose-built facilities that replicate inner-city features, and
generating respect from skateboarders in relation to the ownership of the CBD.
It recognized that skateboarding is a legitimate mode of transport for many young people
[and] as long as there is minimal risk of disturbance to other people, skaters have an equal
right to utilise a pedestrian access (5). The report also demonstrated that the City was
willing to consider investigating the possibility of constructing purpose built features that
replicated existing regularly skated buildings and art works (8).
Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 483
Two years later, a skateboarding report was compiled after Councillor Lisa Scafdi
had expressed concerns over the limitations of protecting public and private property from
damage caused by skateboarding. At its meeting on 25 May 2004, the Planning and Urban
Development Committee requested that a report be prepared investigating whether
penalties or prohibitions could be implemented against youths skating within the city and
damaging public infrastructure. Section 208 of the Road Trafc Code 2000 actually
permits skateboarding on public thoroughfares and footpaths, which takes precedence
over local law (Activities on Thoroughfares and Trading in Thoroughfares and Public
Places Local Law 1999 prohibits skateboarding and related activities with nes up to
$3000). The City contacted the Western Australian Police Service requesting clarication
and was told that skaters using a footpath or shared path are not committing any offence
unless they failed to keep to the left where practicable or give way to pedestrians. Thus the
report recommended that one solution could be the amendment of the Road Trafc Code
2000 to prohibit the use of wheeled recreational devices and toys in identied areas, thus
creating exclusion zones.
The news about the Citys skateboarding report was met with some suspicion by the
young people of the Perth Youth Advisory Council (PYAC), a voluntary organization of
young people under 25 that aims to be a productive source of youth consultation in the City
of Perth. The report claimed the Citys Youth Advisory Council has not in the past
supported the development of skateboarding facilities within the Citys boundaries as it
prefers to redirect young people to suburban skateparks (City of Perth 2004); however,
the PYAC had made no such claim and had not been consulted by the City of Perth about
skateboarding in some time. Furthermore the PYAC had been supporting On The Edge, a
project promoting skateboarding as a legitimate activity. The Perth Youth Development
Ofcer, Michael Scott, also expressed concern over these proposed measures for dealing
with skateboarding (pers. comm. 4 August 2004).
In September 2004, the City of Perth gave Geoff Cooper, Policy Manager for the
Property Council of Australia, a commitment to consider the idea of a skateboarding
taskforce (Miraudo 2004, 17). The Property Council, the peak body for building owners,
managers and developers, had rst approached the City of Perth in October 2003 with a
number of suggestions to stop people on skateboards sliding down banisters or stairs,
gouging out chunks of steel and concrete and taking off paint on their way (DAnger
2004, 42). The Property Council suggested Perth take similar measures to Melbournes
Skate Safe program establishing skateboard-free zones, and a taskforce to bring building
managers and owners, city council ofcials and police together to consider solutions to the
skateboarding problem. While Cooper felt an essential part of this strategy was also to
sanction a place where skateboarding would be allowed (Miraudo 2004, 17), calling for an
inclusive city (17), the City of Perth skateboarding report simply suggested creating
exclusion zones.
The above case illustrates that programs do not always go according to plan because
they are multivocal, contested and often contradictory. For instance, when the
skateboarding report was directed to the Planning and Urban Development Committee,
a further report was required which would seek comments from the Citys stakeholders
including the PYAC, as well as consider the options and implications in amending the
Road Trafc Act. Also, the intervention of Michael Scott, the City of Perth Youth
Development Ofcer, and the Perth Youth Advisory Council led to a skater being retained
by the City to develop a skateboarding strategy and an audit later in 2005 (M. Scott, pers.
comm. 15 May 2005).
484 K.-J. Lombard
A second reason that programs do not always go according to plan is because, as Rose
and Miller (1992, 190) note, the world of programmes is heterogenous, and rivalrous.
Programmes complexify the real, so solutions for one programme tend to be the problems
for another. This has occurred with the governance of skateboarding in the City of Perth
the Road Trafc Code and local law on skateboarding contradict each other, while the
Perth City Council, Property Council of Australia, Youth Development Ofcer and PYAC
all have different skateboarding programs, and one programs solutions present problems
for another program. Since programs are so rivalrous, it opens up possibilities for different
kinds of governance, not just one vision for rule.
Thirdly, the messy formation and implementation of governmental programs can be
explored through the role of resistances and contestation. Governmentality literature tends
to theorize resistance out of the picture or simply ignore it. As OMalley, Weir, and
Shearing (1997, 510) point out, the governmentality literature has inherited this limited
regard for contests and resistances, placing them within the category of sources of
programmatic failure. They add that
even where resistance is described in the governmentality literature (as in Hunt and Wickham
1994), it is accorded neither the constitutive role that Foucault makes available for it through
the denial of its exteriority to rule nor the possibility of providing a counter/reverse project, or
alternative goals or procedures for governance. This theoretical silence in governmentality
work persists despite abundant evidence that contestations, resistances and social antagonisms
shape rule through systematic provision of alternatives. (510)
However, it is important to engage with the role that resistance plays in governmental
programs, because it has the potential for destabilising those programs and reshaping their
nal arrangement (Dean and Hindess 1998, 15).
As Mitchell Dean and Barry Hindess suggest, resistance has a constitutive role.
OMalley, Weir, and Shearing (1997) explore this further. They write that in
governmentality literature there is a tendency to view the formation of programs from
the programmers perspective, which means that contestation and resistance are viewed
only as obstacle and failure, and, in turn, failure is understood primarily as a source of
reform and innovation by the programmers (51011). There is obviously a need to
consider resistance beyond simply obstacles and failures, since as OMalley, Weir, and
Shearing point out, contestations and resistances actually shape rule.
As a discussion of the role of resistance at the abstract level has limitations, it is
worthwhile exploring this theme in relation to an American skatepark which was built by
skateboarders without permission and later sanctioned by government authorities.
Journalist Phillip Dawdy (n.d., paras. 301) explains how Portlands Burnside began,
in late 1990, the public right-of-way between 2nd and 3rd Avenues under Burnside Bridge
was a ea market for junkies, alcoholics, prostitutes and drifters waiting to catch a freight train
to Sacramento. Homeless men slept in abandoned cars; the pavement was littered with rigs for
shooting heroin. Except for days of high wind, rain seldom wet the pavement. A few skaters
had futzed around the area before. Around the same time, a proposed skatepark in Gabriel
Park had been killed by neighbors (including Charlie Hales). Skaters had a need and access to
a few bags of cement. So on a rainy Halloween, ve skaters whose identities remain
sketchy, even to this day trowled a cement ramp into place against a disused loading dock
and retaining wall.
Initially, business owners, the police and Portlands risk management bureau were
suspicious, but skaters convinced local businesses (who saw the skaters as cleaning up the
area) to support them. Police ofcers also reported that the park had reduced auto thefts in
the adjacent area signicantly and that vandalism and break-ins of surrounding businesses
Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 485
had ceased (para. 43). Finally, in June 1992 the City Council passed an ordinance
legitimizing the Park provided skaters continued to maintain and manage the site
themselves (para. 44). Burnside Skatepark has existed ever since.
While examples such as this make it seem that authorities are more tolerant of
skateboarding, this does not mean there is less control of the practice. It may appear that
there is increasing support for, and acceptance of, skateboarding; however, these are
simply the effects of the rise of a neo-liberal form of political-economic governance as it is
still an object of government. However, it must be noted that skater-built skateparks prove
that resistance can alter the programmed vision of rule signicantly, and that it is possible
for resistant subjects to inscribe their mark on rule.
As OMalley, Weir, and Shearing (1997, 511) point out, separating contestation from
rule leaves little space for theorizing the productive engagement between them.
Elsewhere, OMalley (1998, 158) has signalled the seriousness of this lack in
governmentality literature:
by understanding politics from the vantage point of mentalities of rule which reduces the role
of resistance to a source of program failure, and by the consequent elision of the constitutive
role of resistance, the governmentality literature is unable to fully investigate major strategies
of liberal governance, together with major sources of contradiction in, and transformation of,
this form of rule.
From the above examples it is possible to observe that governmental programs, strategies
and technologies arise out of a complex eld of contestation (Rose 1999, 275) and are
inscribed by many voices including the subjects of governance. As Miller and Rose
(1990, 14) explain, the real always insists on the form of resistance to programming;
and the programmers world is one of constant experiment, invention, failure, critique
and adjustment. While governmentality literature tends to separate governance
from resistance, ignore it, or theorize it out of the picture, as the case of skate-
boarding demonstrates, it is important to consider since resistance is so implicated
in governance.
Conclusion
In the early 1990s a skate and destroy/skate and create sticker war arose between two of
the most prominent skateboarding magazines in the world. While Transworld
Skateboarding tried to promote a respectable image for skateboarding as a reputable
sport with its skate ands create slogan, Thrasher magazine had a more destructive, skate
and destroy punk ethos. The stickers tended to polarize the skate community, and also
point to the two opposing tendencies inherent in skateboarding today a respectable,
extreme sport and means of creative expression which enacts a form of resistance. While
previous scholarship on skateboarding has stressed its resistive or subversive nature,
skateboarding is so diverse a professional sport, means of transport, form of recreation,
art form that it is impossible to argue that skateboarding is inherently resistive. Yet
despite the fact that skateboarding has been so incorporated into the mainstream, the theme
of resistance continues to strongly resonate with skateboarding. In fact, more recent
changes in the meanings of skateboarding discussed throughout this article have occurred
as skaters have attempted to resist an understanding of it as extreme. While previous
studies into skateboarding also tend to see resistance as separate from incorporation, this
article has developed an account of the incorporation of skateboarding which
acknowledges the constitutive role played by resistance. Such an account demonstrates
that incorporation is not simply a case of gentrication, corruption or exploitation.
486 K.-J. Lombard
Note
1. Sliding along an edge using the trucks, not the wheels or deck of a skateboard.
Notes on contributor
Kara-Jane Lombard is the BA Coordinator for the Faculty of Humanities and teaches in the School of
Media, Communication and Creative Arts at Curtin University of Technology. Her research interests
include youth culture, youth extremism, governmentality and creative industries.
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