‘Sorry Lads (But I’ve Got to Move You on)’

Abstract

This chapter draws upon ethnographic observation and walking interviews with private security staff to offer in-depth insight into the hyper-regulation of the city and the lived dynamics of parkour’s inconsistent inclusion and exclusion from urban space. This chapter argues that the street-level governance of urban space is largely incoherent, fractured and characterised by a myriad of conflicting spatial interests. As neoliberalism has privatised and fractured the city into a series of microspheres of spatial sovereignty, there is a lack of any notion of the common urban good; therefore, what should be allowed and prohibited from urban space. This is a manifestation of the broader trend towards post-political forms of governance. It is argued that the confusion and contradiction that surrounds what city spaces should be for actively contributed to the forms of spatial compromise developed between private security and the traceurs.

Citation

Raymen, T. (2018), "‘Sorry Lads (But I’ve Got to Move You on)’", Parkour, Deviance and Leisure in the Late-Capitalist City: An Ethnography (Emerald Studies in Deviant Leisure), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 125-143. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-78743-811-820181007