Paper short abstract:

the ethnography of the climbing wall shows how late-modern sporting transformations of play help generalise 'from below' the habitus of a distinctively post-sovereign instrumental modernity

Paper long abstract:

Risking frivolity, the ethnography of a climbing wall nonetheless suggests theoretic reward. This is because the climbing wall enfolds mechanisms that crystallise a set of simultaneities of key contemporary significance, namely (i) the simultaneity of play and the threat of death; (ii) the simultaneity of artifice and the cosmic equalisation of copy and reality; and (iii) the carnivalesque simultaneity of playful body-practice and the convergence of sporting bodies upon emergent structures of power. Whilst, in varying degrees, these three simultaneities typify all modern sporting transformations of play and explain why sport is germane to the durability of modern regimes of power, the ethnography of the climbing wall shows how late-modern sporting transformations of play help precipitate and generalise 'from below' the habitus of a distinctively post-sovereign instrumental modernity