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Inviting Partcipants for Research on Climbers 12-Oct-2011 At 8:00:33 AM Mindtaker

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I'm happy to discuss what my research is about if people are interested, but it is sometimes difficult coming up with brief explanations that are not filled with sociology jargon. The process of trying to explain sociology to climbers is often much like trying to explain climbing to sociologists. My honours thesis had a couple of pages devoted to a glossary to help the poor reviewers come to grips with 'leading,' 'aiding', how it is possible to avoid falling and not dying etc.

One of the major reasons I chose to study climbing was because I enjoy sociology and going climbing. Which means I get to do research and go climbing, seemed like a pretty ideal situation.

However, while much of the research that has been done on climbing in sociology/anthropology has been by climbers, there are many accounts that I don't find satisfactory. Much of this is about rock climbing, ignoring the problems that are raised by the somewhat riskier practices of alpine and ice climbing. This is one of the reasons why my study is looking at ice climbing (and not just because I love ice climbing).

But this is also at least a 3 year project that will be covered in hundreds of pages of writing in the coming years. The interviews I am conducting at the moment will be 'preliminary' interviews, where I can take ask broad questions about aspects of climbing and allow climbers to help sort out what are the most engaging components of climbing. That way, over time I can narrow my focus, but not by some arbitrary decision I made before I had conducted any research.