Pratiques extrêmes et transition récréative

Abstract

The infatuation with extreme sports continues to permeate our social life, resulting in new leisure activities. Good examples are spectacular sports such as skiing, climbing, mountaineering, surfing, kayaking, etc., and endurance sports such as running, trails, cycling, cross-country skiing, and triathlons. The feats achieved receive much media coverage. Once for an elite alone, these activities are now potentially acces-sible to all. This new approach has favoured the production of a social norm which has spread throughout the society in the form of a 'mass extreme'. But how can we explain this fascination for the extreme? Is it merely an offspring of our hypermodern societies thirsty for intensity, performativity and excess? Or does it shed light on the current recreational transition through the modes of engagement it requires, which reveal more ambivalent relationships with the self, others, and the environment, be-cause these actually belong to transmodernity?

Keywords

• extreme sports
• leisure transition
• endurance-trail
• hypermodernity
• transmodernity