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Skateboard Video

Archiving the City from Below

  • Book
  • © 2021

Overview

Authors:
  1. Duncan McDuie-Ra

    1. School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Newcastle Australia, Callaghan, Australia

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  • Fills a gap in existing literature by offering ways to use skate video in the study of skate culture, cities and media

  • Responds to calls to rethink the ways we approach research on cities in both the Global North and Global South

  • Investigates and explores the ever-expanding network of cities favoured for skateboarding across the globe

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Table of contents (6 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xi
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction: Archiving the Urban Backstage

    • Duncan McDuie-Ra
    Pages 1-19

  3. Archiving Without Archives

    • Duncan McDuie-Ra
    Pages 21-47

  4. Archiving Urban Space

    • Duncan McDuie-Ra
    Pages 49-78

  5. Archiving Delinquency

    • Duncan McDuie-Ra
    Pages 79-97

  6. Archiving Diversity

    • Duncan McDuie-Ra
    Pages 99-122

  7. Conclusion

    • Duncan McDuie-Ra
    Pages 123-132

  8. Back Matter

    Pages 133-157
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Keywords

About this book

This book is about skateboard video and experimental ways of thinking about cities. It makes a provocative argument to consider skate video as an archive of the city from below. Here ‘below’ has a dual meaning. First, below refers to an unofficial archive, a subaltern history of urban space. Second, below refers to the angle from which skateboarders and filmers gaze upon, capture, and consume the city—from the ground up. Since taking to the streets in the early 1980s, skateboarding has been captured on film, video tape and digital memory cards, edited into consumable forms and circulated around the world. Videos are objects amenable to ethnographic analysis while also archiving exercises in urban ethnography by their creators. I advocate for taking skate video seriously as a (fragile) archive of the urban backstage, collective memory across time and space, creative urban practice, urban encounters (people-to-people and people-to-object/s), and the globalization of a subculture at once delinquent and magnificent.

Reviews

“In crisp, engaging prose, McDuie-Ra recognizes the rich resource that skateboarding video provides for tracing urban transformation at a variety of scales. In framing such media as an unparalleled window on how our city spaces—from the quotidian to the spectacular—are experienced, McDuie-Ra’s analysis does what only the best urban research can achieve, offering a profound and previously ignored vantage point for understanding the intimacies that evolve between humans and their shared built environments.  And it does so in the context of media and performances of urban skateboarding that are in turn masterful, subversive, obnoxious, artful, problematic, beautiful, and startling.” (John Carr, UNSW, Australia)

“In this engaging and provocative work McDuie-Ra’s metaphor is powerful; here is a culture that documents itself ‘from below’. By adopting the video camera as a ritual item, skateboarders have created an informal archive of urban life and social change. In studying these videos, the author invites us to become intimately familiar with the overlooked corners of cities across the globe, presenting an informal index of development and austerity, and an extraordinary resource for academic study. This clear and accessible voice questions the central tenets of skateboard culture, showing that through video, skateboarders can be responsible delinquents, and inclusive elitists who cherish and honour their history. A remarkable text that urges the reader to reconsider the ways we archive urbanism, occupy space, and think of race.” (Paul O’Connor, author of Skateboarding and Religion)


“In an era when footage speaks louder than words, McDuie-Ra convinces us that we can perceive and understand cities from an alternative, yet novel perspective. This is a highly readable and intriguing work for urban sub-cultural scholars interested in conducting media-based archival research or content analysis, as well as for those seeking an in-depth depiction of skaters’ embodied and socio-cultural experience.” (Chihsin Chiu, National Taiwan University)

Authors and Affiliations

  • School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Newcastle Australia, Callaghan, Australia

    Duncan McDuie-Ra

About the author

Duncan McDuie-Ra is Professor in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Newcastle, Australia. His most recent books include: Skateboarding and Urban Landscapes in Asia: Endless Spots (2021), Ceasefire City: Militarism, Capitalism, and Urbanism in Dimapur (2020, co-authored with Dolly Kikon) and Borderland City in New India: Frontier to Gateway (2016).

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Skateboard Video

  • Book Subtitle: Archiving the City from Below

  • Authors: Duncan McDuie-Ra

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5699-6

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Singapore

  • eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-981-16-5698-9Published: 21 September 2021

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-981-16-5701-6Published: 22 September 2022

  • eBook ISBN: 978-981-16-5699-6Published: 20 September 2021

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XI, 157

  • Number of Illustrations: 2 b/w illustrations, 18 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: Human Geography, Urban Studies/Sociology, Sociology of Culture, Cultural Studies

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