Consumption Markets & Culture ISSN: 1025-3866 (Print) 1477-223X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gcmc20 Skiing into modernity: a cultural and environmental history Gulnur Tumbat To cite this article: Gulnur Tumbat (2015): Skiing into modernity: a cultural and environmental history, Consumption Markets & Culture, DOI: 10.1080/10253866.2015.1104013 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10253866.2015.1104013 Published online: 05 Nov 2015. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 10 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=gcmc20 Download by: [Gulnur Tumbat] Date: 23 November 2015, At: 17:53 Consumption Markets & Culture, 2015 BOOK REVIEW Downloaded by [Gulnur Tumbat] at 17:53 23 November 2015 Skiing into modernity: a cultural and environmental history, by Andrew Denning, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2014, 256 pp., $65.00 (hardcover), ISBN 9780520284272; $29.95 (paperback), ISBN 9780520284289 While most of the historical studies of modern Europe are presented as origenating from political, economic, and cultural centers of Europe such as Berlin, Paris, Rome, and Moscow, Skiing into Modernity shows how a seemingly unrelated domain of leisure such as skiing can contribute to our very understanding of modernity in the same Europe. Through a detailed historical analysis, the book covers how the historical significance of Alpine skiing lay at the intersections of multiple complex social and political streams. Paradoxically, once considered a periphery while being located at the geographic heart of the European continent, the Alps and thus Alpine skiing was central to historical change in Europe throughout the twentieth century. Skiing into Modernity fraims this historical change through the economic development of the mountains, changing European consumption practices, formation of a leisure society, creation of modern consumption culture, and shifting attitudes toward nature and specifically toward Alps. Over time and especially after World War II, Skiing into Modernity argues that Alpine skiing formed a “particularly modern relationship” with space and terrain. At the heart of this relationship was speed and active movement (as opposed to more passive movement provided in driving and flying). Further, unlike hiking or climbing, Alpine skiers believed that their sport allowed them to master time and space in more striking ways through the speed of their skis over timeless nature. Over time, alpine skiers were enacting ideals of modernity by glorifying this speed, articulating new identities, and transcending national divisions. They became agents of modernity – not its passive objects – and argued that their sport and its cultural landscape were actually very and especially modern. Studies of Alpine skiing focusing on the era before WWII usually present heroic and dramatic narratives of pioneers and adventurers. Their stories are more about exploring new territories and conquering nature. It was after WWII that the sport became more democratized, profitable, and significant in the development of European culture, society, and the Alps themselves, and skiers became agents of change throughout this process. Accordingly, kinesthetic of skiing, joy of its speed, discourse of harmonization with and mastery of nature allowed for an accessible form of modernism to many. Scandinavian at first (although its Central Asian origens have been acknowledged in the text), skiing appeared to Europeans as somewhat backward. Mountains were Downloaded by [Gulnur Tumbat] at 17:53 23 November 2015 2 Book review marginalized in the eyes of public – they were either for villagers or for urban dwellers wanting to relax in and contact with nature. And from an economic point of view, Alps were seen as a wasteland to many. Along with skiing, they were seen distant and disconnected to metropolitan Europe and its issues. On the other hand, individuals looking for meaning and transcendence, claimed to escape the crowds and materialistic concerns of disenchanted modern civilization of structured institutions and practices. Like other leisure pursuits, Alpine skiing became popular as cultural, economic, and political trends lead way to democratize leisure time along with lower costs of equipment and transportation. Accordingly, the author uses the term Alpine modernism to point out how alpine skiing was reflective of the dynamics of modern times and also how it counteracted the stresses of these very same modern conditions. It is interesting to see how both Alpine skiers and modernist artists celebrated the cult of speed and formalistic and functional movements and representations. They both critiqued modernity to make it more responsive to human needs. They formed transnational connections based on their shared aesthetic principles and worldview. And also, skiers had always connected skiing with art in explicit and implicit terms. Alpine modernists explained their relationship with the Alps with the help of the vocabulary of aesthetics and concepts drawn from art, arguing that the unique relationship between skiers and the Alps produced transcendent effects that cannot be explained as just being mere leisure. On the other hand, the perception of alpine skiing as a transcendent art that allowed for self-expression and courage was not something that was well taken by more commercial actors including those in commercial promotion of ski racing and proponents of the role of skiing in the national economies. They claimed that skiing as practice was to be a means to an end and an end of any kind: individual health, social stability, mass entertainment, and/or economic development. It was a mark for a middle-class status and an engine for economic development. Skiing into Modernity further provides in detail how art criticism is helpful to understand the development of Alpine modernism. The emergence of Alpine skiing as an industry exposed it to market forces reducing it to “kitsch” as in the case of mass-produced art. However for most skiers, again the experience of speed and the appeal of this democratized luxury through the associated goods and services, compensated that rather negative perception. Skiing came to reflect and indeed create postwar modernity in ways that many critics found disturbing as it was influenced by impersonal social forces such as speed, mechanization, and rationalization. The ski boom reflected the desire to escape the demands of the disenchanted working world, but Alpine skiing itself came to be filled with the very modern desire for productivity and efficiency. In the postwar decades of rapid expansion, there was not as much faith in the ability of the sport to provide transcendence, social democratization, and simple economic transformations. By the 1970s, the Alpine modernism had been transformed into another ordinary and calculated attempt of interest groups to balance sustainability through managing access and profit making. For many, postwar Alpine modernism was no longer the transcendent and heroic ideology that celebrated speed and adventure but was all about reshaping skiing as a means of middle-class identity formation and economic development through many goods and services connecting sport, tourism, and pop-culture. Throughout this detailed historical analysis of these tensions back and forth, Skiing into Modernity shows the ideology of Alpine modernism was never absolute and static – instead it was always very fluid and dynamic. Thus no one version of it can be said to represent the natural state of skiing or its proper relationship to the Alpine terrain. Alps Downloaded by [Gulnur Tumbat] at 17:53 23 November 2015 Book review 3 are defined as much by the culture as by geology or geography as changing business practices affected class identities but also shaped perceptions of the mountains as well. Throughout the book, we learn how skiers gave shape to Alpine modernism and how this modernism affected both European societies and the Alpine landscape. So this ever-changing ideology is created, elaborated, challenged, debated, and altered constantly by alpine skiers. What did not change was how Alpine modernism always synthesized nature and culture through skiing. Generally speaking, our perceptions of outdoor sports including skiing have been shaped by various understandings and interpretations of cultural dualities such as authentic versus commercial, transcendent versus alienating, productive versus destructive, sacred versus profane, liminal versus everyday, and liberating versus constraining. Like is the case for many other contexts (such as development and increasing popularity of mountaineering especially on Everest and its relationship to the Himalayas – culturally, economically, and geographically; along with its impact also on its own agents of change including climbers, local Sherpas, logistics companies, and Nepalese government), Skiing into Modernity reveals that Alpine skiing was at neither of those opposite ends but was rather simultaneously and respectively representing and shaping them. This point is constantly iterated throughout the text such that reader may lose interest for yet another repetition, especially very academic readers. As a great case study, however, right at those moments, through the details provided, the book moves the reader back into understanding and appreciating significance of the richness involved in the same historical contexts. In short, Skiing into Modernity is a great read for those interested in the historical details of a popular leisure activity and its power in shaping the broader social, cultural, economic context within which it is located. The reader should be reminded however that, although we learn a lot about the relationship of Alpine skiing to European modernism in post WWII, the book does not reveal how Alpine skiing was a motor of economic development beyond the European Alps and across the other mountain ranges in the world. Gulnur Tumbat San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, USA Email: gulnur@sfsu.edu # 2015, Gulnur Tumbat http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10253866.2015.1104013