Risking your life for a race: risk and illegal automobile and motorcycle street races

Abstract

The objective of the present article is to analyze the practices and meanings produced by youths involved in illegal automobile and motorcycle street races and radical maneuvers. This ethnographic study sought to understand risk behaviors among racers and the meaning they attribute to danger, adventure and the body sensations experienced in their practices. To this end, the authors had to adopt a broader meaning of risk and understand certain practices as a counterpoint to biopolitics or forms of life control. The racers are young individuals from lower-income classes, who respond to social impotence, which deprives them of economic (and social) capital, by using technological capital. This gives them status among their peers and social visibility, even if in contraband, as these practices are illegal, and their risks and adventures become a constituting element of identity construction.