942.1
Voluntary Risk-Taking As Habituated Action: How Can a Practice-Theoretical Approach Contribute to Risk Research?
Within the sociology of risk, the last 25 years have witnessed a development from viewing risk as something to be avoided towards viewing risk-taking as part of one’s self-development. Researchers have argued that routinised everyday life compels us to make ‘escape attempts’ (Cohen & Taylor, 1992) in which we deliberately put ourselves at risk. Central in this line of theorizing is Stephen Lyng’s notion of ‘edgework’ (Lyng, 1990; 2005); i.e. voluntary risk-taking which negotiates the ‘edge’ between control and loss-of-control (Lyng, 2005). The concept of ‘edgework’ sheds light on important aspects of risk-taking – but it also leaves some aspects of risk-taking in the dark.
The empirical case under study in this paper is youth recreational drug use; a form of voluntary risk-taking that has often been viewed in terms of edgework. However, viewing recreational drug use as edgework also entails some limitations: First, not all practices defined as risk-taking are actually experienced as such by the people involved. Experienced recreational drug users do not necessarily view their own drug use as ‘risky’. And second, the notion of edgework builds on an underlying assumption about reflexivity; that risk-taking is a deliberate and carefully considered act. However, risk-taking is perhaps not always as well-considered; it may be more spontaneous or it may be non-reflexive.
To try to take these limitations into account, the present paper will allow for other views on risk-taking by drawing on insights from practice-theory, in particular notions of habituated action and embodied knowledge originating from the work of Bourdieu and Wacquant. In the paper I demonstrate how a practice-theoretical approach can contribute to our understanding of youth drug use by focusing on the subjective perceptions of risk, and on the bodily and embodied practice of risk-taking.