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

Astronomy Resources

The concept of orbiting bodies is complicated by the fact that no real system exists--be it satellite and planet, planet and sun, of binary stars--in which one object revolves around the center of the other. Rather, both bodies revolve about a common center of mass. The idea of center of mass enters into discussions of dynamics throughout an astronomy course or unit, beginning with the motions of the Solar System and recurring in analyses of stellar systems and of galaxie

Astronomy Resources

Understanding why an orbiting satellite neither travels in a straight line away from the body about which it is revolving, nor falls inward toward it, is an important concept in both astronomy and physics. Demonstrating an orbit in a classroom is made difficult by the Earth\u27s gravity. The Earth\u27s gravity can be used, along with simple kitchenware, to create a model of a planetary or satellite orbit

Unmasking Albany : Addressing social issues through mask-work with young people in a Western Australian regional centre

My research looked at whether mask-work could be used to address social issues affecting young people in a Western Australian regional centre. It consisted of a case study, where I ran a six day workshop series in two Albany primary schools, with students who had been selected by their school to participate. Throughout the workshops, the young participants each made a full expressive mask, learnt how to perform in different mask styles, developed a character and took part in a small performance at their school. I employed a performance ethnography methodology and utilised methods such as participant observation, structured interviews and student and artist evaluations in the project. My research touched on two main areas of theory: mask-work and theatre as therapy. After examining the existing literature in these two fields, I integrated aspects of Augusto Baal\u27s concept of theatre as therapy (1979; 1995; 2006) into the use of mask-work in the field of drama therapy. I then used this integrated approach as the basis for my six day mask workshop series. The aim of this integration was to see whether this approach would be successful in working with children who had been identified as having social issues. The final presentation of the project has two elements: an exegesis and an exhibition. The exhibition is the creative component of the project, showing filmed footage, photographs, interview transcripts, a display of the participant\u27s masks and the results of the project. The exegesis serves to contextualise the exhibition by providing my interpretation of literature on mask-work and theatre as therapy, and how I integrated this into the workshops

Astronomy Resources

The scale of the solar system is often demonstrated by having students stand at appropriate distances away from one another in order to represent the planets\u27 average distances from the Sun. At any practical representative scale, however, the physical diameters of the planets cannot be shown at the same time