Urgent dreams: climbing, rationalization and ambivalence

Abstract

Editors of climbing magazines and the British Mountaineering Council try to promote responsible attitudes to the 'crag environment' but fail to see that it is their popularizing of the sport that is at least partly responsible for the problem in the first place. This raises the broader question of how different descriptions and evaluations, often separating causes from consequences, are handled by climbing culture. The idea of recreation in general and climbing in particular as offering escape or respite from the demands of an increasingly rationalized lifeworld is proposed, and critically examined in the light of recent developments in the sport. Ambivalence as a response to the reflexivity of late-modern cultural life is discussed, with particular reference to cultural conflicts within climbing between sport and adventure variants. Ambivalence is contrasted with Nietzschean martial virtues associated with postmodernity's practice of deconstructive cultural warfare.