Everyday envisionings: running pleasures and pains

The precise ways in which we go about doing the mundane, often repetitive, actions of everyday life are central concerns of ethnographers and theorists working within the traditions of the sociology of the mundane, sociological phenomenology and ethnomethodology. In this article, we utilize insights derived from Schützian phenomenology and its operationalization via ethnomethodology to provide a novel perspective on a particular, mundane and embodied social practice: training for distance running - in specific places: our favoured running routes. Despite a growing corpus of ethnographic studies of sports and physical cultures, relatively scant analytic attention has been devoted to investigating the actual, mundane, everyday practices of “doing” or “producing” physical cultural activity, particularly from a sensory auto/ethnographic perspective (Allen-Collinson & Hockey, 2009; Sparkes, 2009). Here we seek to “mark” (Brekhus, 1998) the everyday activity of training for distance running, in particular analysing how terrain is habitually seen, evaluated and experienced on the run

The essence of sporting embodiment: phenomenological analyses of the sporting body

Whilst in recent years the sociology of sport has taken to heart vociferous calls ‘to bring the body back in’ to analyses of sporting activity, the ‘promise of phenomenology’ signalled by Kerry and Armour (2000), remains under-realised with regard to sporting embodiment. Surprisingly, given the focus of study, relatively few accounts are truly grounded in the corporeal realities of the lived, sensuous sporting body. Phenomenology offers us a powerful framework for such analysis and has been adopted and utilised in very different ways by different social science disciplines. The purpose of this paper is to consider how existential phenomenology in particular might be utilised in the study of sport and physical activity, and we draw upon data from a collaborative autoethnographic project on distance running to illustrate this. The use of existential phenomenology and autophenomenography offers, we contend, fresh insights in portraying the ‘essences’, sensuosity, corporeal immediacy and richly-textured experiences of sporting embodiment. Keywords: Existential Phenomenology, Sporting Embodiment, Merleau-Ponty, Autophenomenography, Autoethnograph

La etnografía del deporte: algunas observaciones y sugerencias

Universidad Pablo de Olavid

Knowing the 'Going': the sensory evaluation of distance running

To date there has been little research into the mundane direct embodiment of sporting activity. This paper seeks to contribute to a small but developing literature by portraying how distance running training sessions are experienced in a sensory way and how that direct embodied knowledge is used to categorise and evaluate the practise of ongoing training. The paper looks at the sensory practices which are used to evaluate distance running performanc

Mundane Ritual Practices and Distance Running

Mundane ritual practices which effect transformation from work role to athletic role to domestic ones

Endurance and running-in-the-world

In recent years, although sport sociologists have addressed the call ‘to bring the body back in’ to theorisations of sport and physical cultures, to date the ‘promise of phenomenology’ remains largely unfulfilled with regard to sporting embodiment and distance running specifically. Relatively few accounts are grounded in the ‘flesh’ of the lived sporting body, and phenomenology offers a powerful framework for such analysis. In our presentation, we employ a form of ‘phenomenological sociology’ in order to explore the lived meaning and experience of endurance in distance running and more specifically in training for distance running. Distance running cannot be accomplished, we argue, without substantial suffering and stoicism; an enduring mind and body are requisite. Drawing on two of our research projects on distance running, we seek here to ‘bring to life’ the sensuous ‘flesh’ of the running-body, and illustrate the talk with rich data, focusing upon the lived experience of endurance

Autoethnography as ‘valid’ methodology? A study of disrupted identity narratives

Despite its burgeoning popularity in recent years, autoethnography is still considered a contentious, even a ‘self-indulgent’ genre, at least within some quarters of the social sciences, where it is viewed as more akin to ‘navel-gazing’ autobiography than to rigorous social scientific research. This article considers some of the advantages and challenges of working with a variation of the genre – a collaborative autoethnography. Our research project examined from a sociological perspective disrupted athletic identities occasioned by long-term sporting injuries. Whilst not a narrative analysis per se, we examine here some of the narratives (spoken and written) co-produced during the process of injury and rehabilitation. Such narrative activity facilitated sense-making at the phenomenological, interactional and analytic levels, and helped counteract the threat of identity disruption caused by long-term, serious injury. The article considers the potential of the autoethnograhic approach for providing unique insights into lived-body experiences, and concludes with a discussion of just some of the ethical issues arising from this methodological approach. Keywords: Autoethnography, Ethics, Narratives, Sporting Injurie

Runners’ tales: Autoethnography, injury and narrative

This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Auto/Biography.This paper examines the importance of narrative activity in the construction of the injured and rehabilitated sporting body and the successful reconstruction of positive athletic identity. It is based on autoethnographic research undertaken by the authors, both of whom are middle/long-distance runners, during a two-year period of injury and gradual rehabilitation. The paper delineates certain narratives which were generated during the process of injury and recovery, commencing with narratives of suffering and sacrifice, through those of pilgrimage and blame to the more positive narratives of compensation and subsequent empowerment and progress. We examine the role played by these narratives in enabling us to make sense phenomenologically of our injuried bodies, to achieve momentum and to maintain positive running identities in the face of threat to the running selves. Via narrative exchanges, as ‘co-tellers’ we achieved a high degree of intersubjectivity which was crucial to our eventual return to full running fitness and athletic identity

Everyday envisionings: running pleasures and pains

The precise ways in which we go about doing the mundane, often repetitive, actions of everyday life are central concerns of ethnographers and theorists working within the traditions of the sociology of the mundane, sociological phenomenology and ethnomethodology. In this article, we utilize insights derived from Schützian phenomenology and its operationalization via ethnomethodology to provide a novel perspective on a particular, mundane and embodied social practice: training for distance running - in specific places: our favoured running routes. Despite a growing corpus of ethnographic studies of sports and physical cultures, relatively scant analytic attention has been devoted to investigating the actual, mundane, everyday practices of “doing” or “producing” physical cultural activity, particularly from a sensory auto/ethnographic perspective (Allen-Collinson & Hockey, 2009; Sparkes, 2009). Here we seek to “mark” (Brekhus, 1998) the everyday activity of training for distance running, in particular analysing how terrain is habitually seen, evaluated and experienced on the run

Distance running as joint accomplishment: an ethnomethodological perspective

Whilst there exists a substantial literature focused upon abstract theorizations of sport, at present there is little ethnographic work within the sociology of sport on the mundane practices of actually ‘doing’ sport. In sum, the phenomenological ground of ‘how’ sport is accomplished remains largely uncharted territory for researchers (Allen-Collinson 2009, Haldrup & Larsen 2006, Hockey & Allen Collinson 2007, Sparkes 2009). This lacuna applies both to the phenomenology of the lived sporting body and to the embodied interaction that occurs between participants as they do sport. In order to address this lacuna, this presentation offers an in-depth analysis of how training together for the sport of distance running constitutes a joint accomplishment by us as distance runners. Here we focus specifically upon the sensory and interactional work, which, for us, are essential components in the experience of ‘doing’ running. The theoretical foundation of the presentation lies in the social phenomenology of Alfred Schütz (1967), which focused upon how individuals sustain routine social life using a ‘stock of knowledge at hand’, in particular the mundane use of typfications, the common sense constructs that individuals use to order their social world on a moment to moment basis. In applying Schützian insights to the study of members’ methods for producing and reproducing everyday social order, Harold Garfinkel (1967) developed ethnomethodology, the study of members’ methods, their mundane practices for managing the social world. Adopting an ethnomethodological stance, our presentation portrays ‘how’ joint distance running training sessions are habitually accomplished