Phenomenology and extreme sports in natural landscapes
pp. 135-146
in: Sean Gammon, Sam Elkington (eds), Landscapes of leisure, Berlin, Springer, 2015Abstract
In the early 1900s, Husserl (1970) reminded us of the imperative to return to the Lebensweldt, or life-world. He was preoccupied with the crisis of Western science which alienated the experiencing-self from the world of immediate experience. His call to return to immediate experience assumes more salience in our increasingly urban and digital world than at any time previously. Arguably we are more divorced from the immediate experience of being part of the natural world than in any previous period in history. Examining the experience of people engaged in extreme sport provides us with the opportunity of gaining an understanding of the dimensions of human experience in the context of the natural landscape with all its complexity and richness.
