“He Didn't Go in Doing a Skydive”: Sustaining the Illusion of Control in an Edgework Activity

Exploring Lyng's notion of “edgework,” this article draws on ethnographic data to explore the ways skydivers create and sustain the belief that they can maintain control while working the “edge” in this sport. The article focuses on the ways skydivers construct and maintain the “illusion” that they can exercise control as they negotiate their particular edge. It elaborates the ways this sense of control is constructed and the extent to which it informs the ways risk recreators approach the edge. In the choices jumpers make about how they participate in the sport and the ways they interpret the experiences of themselves and other jumpers, they defend the position that their hazardous environments are within their control. When this position becomes untenable, they often draw on the notion of fate to construct certain hazards as outside of the sport, thereby sustaining their sense of control.