Bikers: Culture, Politics and Power

Folklore, April, 2001 by Linda-May Ballard

Bikers: Culture, Politics and Power. By Suzanne McDonald-Walker. Oxford and New York: Berg, 2000. xiii 209 pp. Illus. Price unspecified. ISBN 1-85973-356-5 (pbk), 1-85973-351-4 (hbk)

In 1998, the MV Augusta motorcycle marque unveiled a new machine, the F4, which has been hailed as a triumph of design, a superb work of art and "as the finest all round sports bike yet made." This new MV is as direct a statement as one might wish of the role, power and status of the motorcycle in contemporary society. In her book, McDonald-Walker argues that the motorcycle has become a "consumer item" and suggests that consumer-led bikers may "come to a greater understanding of the nature of threats posed to British motorcycling, it is equally possible that they may come to form a crucial component in British riders' rights in the coming years." However, it might equally well be argued that consumerism itself offers protection, the power of the market place, and that a wide range of interests, including those of motorcycle manufacturers and the producers of other consumer goods essential to the biker, may have a voice alongside that of motorcyclists themselves in promoting amongst legislators the idea that motorcycling is a Good Thing. While McDonald-Walker explains that her methodology is ethnographic, her approach that of the participant-observer, her book reads by turns as curiously clubbable and as a polemic.

McDonald-Walker is by no means the first to apply ethnographic methodology to the study of motorcyclists. There is, for instance, the late Maz Harris's Bikers, Birth of a Modern Day Outlaw (Faber and Faber, 1985--Harris was both a Hell's Angel and a sociologist) or anthropologist Daniel Wolf's excellent book on Outlaw motorcyclists, The Rebels (University of Toronto Press, 1991), by which McDonald-Walker is apparently uninfluenced, and there is no reference to these studies in her bibliography, although she does refer to Harris's unpublished doctoral thesis. True, McDonald-Walker does not address herself to Outlaw motorcyclists (the occasional references she makes to Hell's Angels, for instance, appear to use that term in a surprisingly loose way), but Wolf's is an excellent methodological exemplar, a strikingly well informed study of culture, politics and power among motorcyclists. It is also surprising to find that the caption to Figure 1 in Bikers gives the impression that a cafe racer is a biker, rather than a style of motorcycle. Even more surprising is that some of the illustrations, including Figure 3, are not captioned at all. Unfortunately, the quality of the illustrations is uneven, and it is seldom clear how they contribute to or advance the argument.

In principle, ethnographic study of non-Outlaw bikers is a very good idea, but imagine the problems of setting out to do an ethnographic study of, say, car drivers. A feminist study of biking would also be useful, but while McDonald-Walker nods in this direction, most particularly in her chapter "Women Riders and the Motorcycling Community," it is a disappointment that her analysis seems rather superficial. Analysing why people (irrespective of gender) choose to become bikers, she discusses the "flirtation with danger" as one of the motives. However, some bikers hone their mechanical and riding skills to perfection, and would argue that it is neither bikes nor cars, but people who are dangerous. McDonald-Walker argues that "to some extent, motorcyclists are gamblers," but to some bikers, riding a motorcycle appears to represent no more of a risk than does crossing a road. There are bikers who rely on their skills rather than on the odds. To state as McDonald-Walker does in print, "A noise like a high-speed flatulent cow announces the presence of a Ducati" is to trivialise, and maybe to shorten the odds and to flirt very dangerously. (Incidentally, it may be helpful for non-bikers to learn that in the summer of 2000, the University of Northumbria hosted an exhibition of Ducati motorcycles under the title "Ducati 2000, an Icon of the Century.")

One of the difficulties in studying non-Outlaw bikers is that non-Outlaws are not a homogeneous group, a point appreciated by McDonald-Walker. It is understandable that she therefore focuses on riders' rights associations and their achievements in the face of late twentieth-century legislation, particularly European Union legislation with regard to motorcycling. Her chapter dealing with the potential impact of legislation is perhaps the strongest in a book that is peppered with occasional insights, such as that from the (presumably male) biker quoted as commenting: "I'm certainly not a big person, I'm severely lacking in any sort of masculine physique. But when I have a leather jacket on, I've suddenly gained three stone and a torso. Yes, symbolically I do gain, and it is nice, occasionally, to use the myth for my own end," a remark in its way as subversive as a Rocker's studded jacket. While the book has several strengths, its greatest weakness is that its writer seems to be too closely wedded to a cause, her study too strongly influenced by an urge to crusade on behalf of the need for bikers to espouse activism. She refers to a distinction between "merely (sic) being a biker'" and "being a biker politically" and her concluding sentence reads like a value judgement on bikers who have failed to embrace the cause. This degree of subjectivity is an issue of which the participant-observer might wish to be more aware. Intrinsically, a polemic may be all very well, but it is not a particularly satisfactory substitute for ethnography. Now, where did I leave that bandanna?