ABSTRACT
Skateboarding's wisdom is a baffling patchwork of social and material features not easy to comprehend. What exactly is its magic, and how do you write about something as enchanting and mysterious? This introductory chapter explores how researchers make sense of the diverse ways skaters move and their revolutionary drive for political action. An inquiry into the senses intimates why skaters hold such a complex and ambivalent socio-political role. It also scrutinizes how researchers have written about skateboarding from an insider's perspective. The “rolling ethnography” is introduced as the authors' methodological starting point, while the anthropology of the senses is presented as the project's core theoretical framework.
