Constructing authenticity in contemporary consumer culture: the case of lifestyle sports

Abstract

For twenty years, typical outdoor lifestyle sports such as rafting, snowboarding and rock climbing, which used to be exclusively practised in natural environments, are being offered in controlled artificial settings. This process can be described as “the indoorization of outdoor sports”. With this development, questions of authenticity arise. Are these new, commercial forms still authentic lifestyle sports? Can we consider the participants in these indoorized lifestyle sports as authentic athletes? There has been a discussion about authenticity in lifestyle sports since its worldwide popularization and it is valuable to revisit this discussion against the background of new, commercial versions of lifestyle sports. Therefore, this paper offers a qualitative analysis of the consumption of a constructed authenticity in a cultural context increasingly characterized by artificialization.