Climbing as Moral Practice: Embodiment, Emotion, and Ethical Formation Among the Princeton University Climbing Team

Abstract

This thesis examines how climbers learn to become climbers; it argues that climbing is a moral project by tracing the historical, embodied, and emotional dimensions of climbing practices and identity formation. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with the Princeton University Climbing Team, I investigate how climbers articulate what it means to be a “good” climber, and by extension, a certain kind of moral self. The first chapter traces the historical development of climbing ethics, highlighting how debates over risk and respectability shaped modern climbing practices. The second chapter analyzes the formation of a climbing habitus by paying attention to climbing’s phenomenological, aesthetic, and normative aspects. This thesis’ final chapter discusses fear as socially mediated and morally significant, and maintains that climbers learn to manage it in ways that affirm their control and legitimacy. More broadly, this thesis situates morality as a practical, enacted project that arises from discourse and embodied practice. As climbing grows in reach and popularity, it is important to examine the motivations and origins of climbing ethics, and how they shape climbers’ senses of self.