Chaos, Order, and Collaboration

Abstract

Stephen Lyng’s concept of edgework represents a crucial shift in understanding particular kinds of risk taking, as intrinsically and phenomenologically rewarding. Although it has been widely and usefully used since then, scholars have observed limitations in its applicability across class, race, and gender lines. A good deal of recent work has endeavored to address this problem. However, a critical feminist perspective reveals the levels on which this issue is not merely one of scope but a paradigmatic issue. I offer a deconstruction of the edgework concept in order to illustrate this, and an expansion of the model in order to render it more applicable for a wider range of thrill-seeking behaviors. Drawing on four years of ethnographic field work in an SM (sadomasochism) community, I provide an empirical example of the applicability of this amendment for the study of voluntary risk taking across gender boundaries.