Narratives of and from a running-woman’s body: feminist phenomenological perspectives on running embodiment

The female sporting body has been studied in myriad ways over the past 25-30 years, including via a range of feminist frameworks (Hall 1996; Markula 2003; Hargreaves 2007). Despite this developing corpus, studies of sport only rarely engage in depth with the ‘flesh’ (Merleau-Ponty 1969) of the sweating, panting, pulsating, lived female sporting body (Allen-Collinson 2009) and a more corporeally-grounded, phenomenological perspective can enrich our understandings of women’s sporting ‘bodywork’. Here, I suggest that employing a sociological and feminist phenomenological framework can provide a powerful lens through which to explore narratives of the subjective, richly-textured, lived-body experiences of sport and physical activity. Phenomenology of course offers only one of a multiplicity of avenues to investigate sporting embodiment, and here I offer just a small glimpse of its possibilities. To date, sports studies utilising a phenomenological theoretical framework remain surprisingly under-developed, as Kerry and Armour (2000) highlighted over a decade ago, and which largely remains the case (Allen-Collinson 2009), including in relation to phenomenology’s fascinating off-shoot, ethnomethodology (Burke et al. 2008; Hockey and Allen-Collinson, 2013). Further, as Fisher (2000) notes, the significance of the interaction between phenomenology and feminism has only relatively recently begun to be explored. It seems timely, therefore, to address this intriguing, potentially productive, but sometimes uneasy nexus, focusing in this instance upon narratives of female running embodiment

Assault on self: intimate partner abuse and the contestation of identity

The complexities of intimate partner abuse and violence have been studied from a range of theoretical, conceptual, and methodological perspectives. It is argued here that symbolic interactionist analyses offer specific and powerful insights into this particular interactional domain. This article is based on data generated by a topical life-history case study of a well-educated, middle-class, middle-aged man, whose wife subjected him to sustained unilateral violence and abuse, resulting in deleterious consequences for his health and well-being. Data were gathered via a series of in-depth interviews and a personal diary. The analysis draws on Goffman’s conceptualization of “possessional territory” as one of the “territories of the self,” in order to examine the role of possessions in the interactional routines of intimate partner abuse. Key words: intimate partner abuse, domestic violence, abused men, possessional territory, Erving Goffma

Feminist phenomenology and the changing running body: the pleasure/danger nexus

The female sporting body has been studied in myriad ways – both theoretical and methodological - over the past 30 years, including via a range of feminist frameworks. Despite this developing corpus, studies of sport only rarely engage in depth with the ‘flesh’ of the worked-out, sweating, panting, pulsating, lived female sporting body (Allen-Collinson 2011) and a more corporeally-grounded, phenomenological-sociological perspective (Allen-Collinson & Pavey, 2014) is needed to enrich our sociological understandings of women’s sporting/exercising ‘bodywork’. In this paper, I suggest that employing a sociological, feminist phenomenological framework can provide a powerful lens through which to explore narratives of the richly-textured, lived-body experiences of sport and physical activity. Drawing on data from a 3-year autoethnographic and autophenomenographic research project on female distance running, this paper examines the shifting interplay of structure and agency experienced in the lived sporting body, and specifically focuses upon the changing nexus of pleasure and danger as corporeally experienced whilst running in ‘public’ space and place

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

Autoethnography as the engagement of self/other, self/culture, self/politics, selves/futures

Autoethnography as the engagement of self/other, self/culture, self/politics, selves/future

A sociology of everyday violence: interactional encounters in intimate partner abuse

Sociology has sometimes been accused of overlooking the sociological significance of domestic violence, and intimate partner abuse/violence (IPA&V). Phenomenological sociology provides a specific sociology of the everyday, offering powerful insights into the production of interactional routines, including abuse and violence. Drawing upon data from a qualitative study of IPA&V, this article focuses on an in-depth life-history of a British male victim/survivor, who endured unilateral violence from his wife for over 20 years. Data were gathered via six topical life-history interviews and a personal diary. Employing insights from the sociology of the everyday, the article analyses the domestic interactional domain of IPA&V, drawing upon a sociological-phenomenological framework to explore the lived, everyday experience of abuse and violence from the standpoint of a male survivor. This constitutes a relatively under-researched perspective in extant sociological literature

Atmospheres of pleasure & danger: sociological phenomenology & women’s sporting embodiment

To date, in-depth studies of the sensory atmospheric dimensions of women’s sporting/exercise embodiment remain sparse, particularly those employing a feminist and/or sociological phenomenological perspective (Allen-Collinson, 2011; Allen-Collinson & Hockey, 2015) and addressing those senses beyond the ‘Western’ classic sensorium, such as the senses of heat (Allen-Collinson & Owton, 2014). This paper posits feminist sociological-phenomenology as offering a powerful lens through which to explore the sensuous, richly-textured, lived-body experiences of women’s physical activity in outdoor environments. Here, as a distance running-woman, I focus particularly on the shifting experiences of atmospheres of pleasure and danger encountered whilst training in ‘public’ spaces, both urban and remote rural. Drawing on the findings of a 3-year autoethnographic and autophenomenographic research project on women’s distance running, I explore the sensory dimensions of outdoor running ambience, including atmospheres of threat, and the ways in which the nexus of structure and agency is played out and deeply corporeally ‘lived’ in the female sporting and exercising body. Feminist phenomenology combines two powerful theoretical and methodological traditions, and offers an insightful way into the portrayal and analysis of those structures of experience that sometimes ‘feel’ pre-reflective and beyond words. Some of the challenges of representing these kinds of nebulous, ‘grasped’ at experiences of fleeting atmospheric changes are also considered in the paper. Allen-Collinson, J (2011) Feminist phenomenology and the woman in the running body, Sport, Ethics & Philosophy, 5 (3): 287-302. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17511321.2011.602584#.VSZBYvnF9ik Allen-Collinson, J and Owton, H (2014) Intense embodiment: senses of heat in women’s running and boxing, Body & Society. Online early. http://bod.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/03/27/1357034X14538849 Allen-Collinson, J and Hockey, J (2015) From a certain point of view: sensory phenomenological envisionings of running space and place, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 44 (1): 63-83. http://jce.sagepub.com/content/44/1/63?eto

A marked man: a case of female-perpetrated intimate partner abuse

Concepts of intimate partner abuse and violence are shifting, complex, situational and multifaceted. Whilst women's narratives of abuse have provided much needed insights into the subjective experience of intimate partner abuse, men's accounts of female perpetrated abuse have been slower to emerge, generating much controversy and hostility. This paper seeks to add to a small, but developing qualitative literature on male victims' accounts of intimate abuse and violence. Drawing on case study data, the article charts some of the salient themes emerging from a series of in-depth interviews and the personal diary of an abused heterosexual male victim. It explores the congruence with elements of other accounts of intimate abuse and violence. The paper concludes with a discussion of the ways in which male victims of intimate abuse might be understood within contemporary frameworks of masculinity. Keywords intimate partner violence (IPV), domestic violence, male victims, female perpetrator

Autoethnography: situating personal sporting narratives in socio-cultural contexts

Autoethnography: situating personal sporting narratives in socio-cultural contexts Purpose: To introduce autoethnography as an innovative research approach within sport and physical culture, and consider its key tenets, strengths and weaknesses. For illustrative purposes, the chapter draws upon two specific autoethnographic research projects on distance running, one collaborative and one solo