Communitas by Nick Clarke

One topic from class that I have taken a particular intrest in is the concept of communitas. Communitas is a latin verb that portrays an unstructured sense of community or togetherness within a group of people or between certain individuals. This feeling of communitas has been present in many of the primal cultures we have studied during this course and learning more about this topic has only increased the hypothesis I formed two years ago in Anthropology: Qualatative Methods of Research.
The main obective of this class was to conduct a research project in where you form a hypothesis about a topic of your choice that could be looked at from an anthropological point of view. I choose to look into the feeling of communitas that is experienced between skateboarders and within skateboarding culture as a whole. Because skateboarding is often times looked down upon by the public majority, people within this subculture have banned together for the past 40 years and have created an often times unspoken bond between all skateboarders. I have traveled quite alot across the US and have gotten to see this firt hand in how i has accepted as "one of there own" in groups of skateboarders across the country. While visiting these other locations skateboarding has paved the way for me to meet some of the best friends I have ever had all because of our mutual love of skating.