ABSTRACT
Once upon a research project I found myself sitting at the edge of a plane door with only faith that a line was attached to the plane and would pull the ripcord on my parachute the moment I tumbled out. ‘Terrified’ does not begin to portray the state I was in at that moment. Words simply can’t describe it. And what was I researching? My concern as a geographer and social scientist more broadly is with our individual material engagement with the world. So why look to extreme sports to articulate some of the threads running through this politically charged debate?
