ABSTRACT
This chapter explores that Lyng's characterization of a risk factor in 'life-threatening experiences come to acquire a seductively appealing character in the contemporary social context'. It attempts to sketch out how some of the similarities-and differences- between the commodification practices of different physical activities may be playing out. Denzin's discussion of epiphanies is important for applying the sense of flattened affect to contemporary sport forms. The chapter suggests that sport participants-to one extent by virtue of expectations of pleasure in part created by media, to another by the insistence upon commodification of themselves, their lifestyles and their sport- cannot really experience pleasure either, except by rejecting the available contemporary sport and capitalist models. The definitional terms of lifestyle, extreme and action, alternative and outdoor challenge and outdoor education all have varied places within the continuum of purely grass-roots to highly commodified forms of non-mainstream activities.
