What do skydiving, rock climbing, and downhill skiing have in common with stock-trading, unprotected sex, and sadomasochism? All are high risk pursuits. Edgework explores the world of voluntary risk-taking, investigating the seductive nature of pursuing peril and teasing out the boundaries between legal and criminal behavior; conscious and unconscious acts; sanity and insanity; acceptable risk and stupidity. The distinguished contributors to this collection profile high risk-takers and explore their experiences with risk through such topics as juvenile delinquency, street anarchism, sadomasochism, avant-garde art, business risks, and extreme sport.

I. Introduction 1. Edgework and the Risk Taking Experience, Stephen Lyng II. Theoretical Advances in the Study of Edgework 2. Sociology at the Edge: Social Theory and Voluntary Risk Taking, Stephen Lyng 3. Edgework: A Subjective and Structural Model of Negotiating Boundaries, Dragan Milovanovic III. The Edgework Experience: Anarchy and Aesthetics 4. The Only Possible Adventure: Edgework and Anarchy, Jeff Ferrell 5. Edgework and the Aesthetic Paradigm: Resonances and High Hopes, David Courtney IV. Group Variations in Edgework Practices: Gender, Age, and Class 6. Gender and Emotion Management in the Stages of Edgework, Jennifer Lois 7. Adolescents on the Edge: The Sensual Side of Delinquency, William J. Miller V. Mainstreaming Edgework 8. Adventure Without Risk is like Disneyland, Lori Holyfield, Lillian Jonas, and Anna Zajicek 9. Financial Edgework: Trading in Market Currents, Charles W. Smith VI. Historicizing Edgework 10. Edgework and Insurance in Risk Societies: Some Notes on Victorian Lawyers and Mountaineers, Jonathan Simon 11. On the Edge: Drugs and the Consumption of Risk in Late Modernity, Gerda Reith VII. Edgework in the Academy 12. Intellectual Risk Taking, Organizations, and Academic Freedom and Tenure, Gideon Sjoberg 13. Doing Terrorism Research in the Dark Ages: Confessions of a Bottom Dog, Mark S. Hamm