River Alchemy by Jeff Jackson is a column that appears reguarily in Rapid magazine.
When I first noticed paddlers on my home river wearing basketball jerseys under their PFDs, I didn’t put much thought into it. After all, old jerseys sell at Value Village for $3, dry quickly and, being sleeveless, let you show off your guns. When this spring I saw paddlers wearing basketball jerseys under their PFDs but overtop of their dry tops, it occurred to me something else was at play.
We are a peculiar bunch, whitewater paddlers. All paddlers, really. Recently, I was invited to an instructor training day preceding the impressively huge MEC Paddlefest; present were sea kayak, canoe, SUP and whitewater instructors. The sea kayakers wore dry suits and were slathered in sunscreen, the canoeists wore Tilley hats and quick-dry long pants, the SUP instructors reluctantly wore PFDs as they would rather go without, and the whitewater representatives wore helmets—all this despite spending the day sheltered in the Toronto Harbourfront. While as a group we all had much in common (which was the point of the day), what separated us was culture.
Culture is the shared assumptions and values of a group, which get reflected in consistent behaviors. There is something called social identification theory, which proposes that when people choose to join a group, they also take on that culture. What’s more, when individuals really buy in, they take on that culture as part of their identity, and use it to define who they are. This explains why cowboys or biker gangs walk, talk and dress as they do, why triathletes shave their legs, and why someone may be compelled to wear a basketball jersey over his dry top.
There was a time in our short whitewater history when we spoke of New School and Old School, but we don’t anymore. The term was attached to the explosion in freestyle boat designs in the late ‘90s and a new way of paddling that was emerging. The last part of that sentence may irk some: a new way of paddling. While putting the paddle in at the toes and pulling it out at the hips has always moved the boat forward, what did change through that time were the assumptions and values surrounding paddling—a new culture was emerging. For lack of a better term, people called it new or New School, as in not what you old longboat farts are doing.
Social identification theory predicts this, as groups and individuals define themselves primarily by what they are not, especially in the early days of a culture when it is not necessarily clear exactly what they are. But we don’t talk about New and Old School anymore because the new culture became the primary culture of kayaking. It is not new anymore, it just is. It carried forward the original cultural traits from the earlier generation of paddling and added the new elements evolved from playboating.
Culture emerges from shared experience, and over the last decade and a half (up until the last three years, I would argue) we all more or less shared the same paddling experience: evolving boat designs focused on playboating, park and play became river play. But over the last handful of years that shared experience has started to splinter. As the top of the sport has pushed be- yond what the average recreational paddler can do (or even relate to), theirs becomes a different experience than the big wave/waterfall group. Recreational river play is based around different assumptions and values than those being adopted by this elite, and so a separate culture emerges once again.
Back to the basketball jersey: except to a select few, it seems ridiculous. What it does do is declare identification with a group—in this case the basketball jersey happens to represent the big wave gang. Fair enough. Like cowboy boots, a leather biker vest, shaved legs or a Teva tan, this is just the symbol of a culture. These symbols represent our identities, and while it is merely a basketball jersey, I’m not going to criticize someone for defining himor herself as a paddler.
– Jeff Jackson is a professor of Outdoor Adventure at Algonquin College in the Ottawa Valley, and is the co-author of Managing Risk: Systems Planning for Outdoor Adventure Programs, published by Direct Bearing Inc.
This article originally appeared in Rapid, Fall 2012. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it here.
