Playing on the Edge Sadomasochism, Risk, and Intimacy

Playing on the Edge. . . is an exciting sociological contribution to academic explorations of SM, providing an empirically rich window into a rarely seen SM community.

Staci Newmahr's exploration of the public SM scene is interesting, thoughtprovoking, and in some cases, challenging. Her involvement in the field and her willingness to share at least the surface details of her experience are extraordinary. Moreover, her commitment to understanding the community of public SM players with rigor, intellectual honesty, and sensitivity is the hallmark of a great ethnography.

Playing on the Edge is a well written, well supported, clear, easily accessed, and comprehendible yet theoretically rich delineation of a (supposedly deviant) community. In simple terms, this is a very good book and a first-class example of what ethnographic research can and should look like.

[A] ground-breaking book . . . . captivating and ethnographically dense.