Gender, space and fear: A study of women's edgework

This paper considers the role of gender in this equation, using interviews with 4 women edgeworkers to theorise a relationship of gender and risk taking. To do this, I focus on the ways my interview participants use their risk taking to construct valued gender identities (Butler, 1990). To begin, I examine the spatial structure (Lefebvre, 1991) they attribute to their edgework, noting how they employ emotional territories to develop and communicate desirable identities as women who take risks. I then focus on discourses of responsibility available in participant talk, to consider how risk and gender intersect as a form of social regulation of their edgework activities (Donnelly, 2004; Laurendeau, 2008; Rose, 1999). In particular, participants describe having to negotiate the moral regulation of their edgework through gendered discourses of responsibility. I pay specific attention to how participants answer the question of responsibility through guilt and fear, negotiating their way through gendered feeling rules (Hochschild, 1979). This research offers insight into how edgework is used as a political act that spotlights, confronts and reproduces gender as an aspect of a culture of risk (Donnelly, 2004).