Recreational running has been a widely popular form of leisure for half a century, and many countries have experienced a marathon boom in the past decades. In recent years, however, runners have started to run in new ways, often in unconventional settings, and compete in races with various alternative formats. Through an ethnographic approach that builds on in-depth narrative interviews with recreational runners, analysis of runners’ blogs, and participant observation in running events in Estonia, I suggest that as completing a marathon becomes a routine activity, increasingly many dedicated runners turn their bodies into veritable “arenas of experimentation.” Drawing on Zeiler’s concept of bodily “eu-appearance” and Ingold’s concerted approach to movement, perception, and knowledge, and building more generally on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological perspective, I argue that such corporeal experimentation is motivated by novel sensorial experiences that lead to a heightened awareness of one’s own body as well as by a pursuit of altered and intensified perceptual awareness of the environment one runs in.
This article discusses conversion to Protestantism in the Zapotec communities of the State of Oaxaca in Southern Mexico. Conversion to Protestantism in these predominantly Catholic villages has a rupture effect on converts' relationships with their families as well as the Catholic majority. This transformation can be interpreted as a 'social cost', which influences religious choices made by individuals and the sustainability of their new religious affiliations. The cost is generally higher for native villagers than for migrants to the communities. Focusing on the adverse effects of conversion and scrutinising the choices of individuals who do not convert or who return to their previous faith contributes to a more nuanced understanding of religious change. The process is often far more complex and multi-directional at the local level than macro-level trends of rapid Protestant growth suggest.
This article discusses the symbolic and social connotations of mezcal and its consumption in the rural communities of Oaxaca in Southern Mexico. Mezcal, a traditional drink in this region, is a distilled alcoholic beverage made from a particular type of agave called maguey. Based on the author's intermittent fieldwork in the indigenous Zapotec villages of Oaxaca since the late 1990s, the article will scrutinise the local discourse on mezcal, the meanings attached to the drink, and the consumption of mezcal in ritual and social contexts. As the article will demonstrate, an anthropological perspective on mezcal enables us to approach the drink not simply as an alcoholic beverage among many others, but as a very specific cultural construct that is part of a distinct drinking culture. Consuming mezcal in rural Oaxaca is a social act: the collective drinking of mezcal contributes to a sense of community and belonging. Mezcal also serves as a summarising symbol, to use Ortner's term, which metaphorically captures the character and essence of being a serrano (highlander). On the other hand, drinking mezcal can also serve as a marker of social divisions and group boundaries. Consumption and non-consumption of mezcal largely coincides with the boundaries between social groups based either on gender or on religion. The article will close with a brief glimpse at recent state level endeavours to construct mezcal as Mexico's national drink, often building on its local meanings.
Since the turn of the millennium, the number of Estonians running at least one marathon a year has grown nearly twentyfold. This paper links the marathon boom in Estonia to novel ideas about the “good life” among a subset of the country’s middle class, also situating the phenomenon in the broader context of post-1991 socio-economic changes. Drawing on fifty narrative interviews with recreational runners and a content analysis of various runners’ blogs, the article pays special attention to “runners’ bodies.” Recreational marathoners consciously put their bodies at the service of their “selves” by submitting the body to regular physical strain, which fits with their distinctively middle-class ideals of self-discipline, motivation, diligence, and perseverance. But runners’ bodies are also “bodies for others”—they not only encapsulate but also display these ideals. Approaching runners’ bodies as “bodies for selves” and as “bodies for others,” the article makes two arguments. Firstly, a fit body as physical capital and the “purposeful suffering” that long-distance running almost inevitably leads to have recently shifted to the core of living a “good life” in the case of growing numbers of the Estonian middle class. Secondly, the “others” for middle-class runners’ bodies are first and foremost the sedentary and generally overweight bodies of their own class. For a subset of the Estonian middle class, a slim and fit running body, in combination with changed consumption practices and reference groups, serves to distinguish themselves from the generalised idea of a middle-class person in today’s Estonia.
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