Sporting embodiment: sports studies and the (continuing) promise of phenomenology

Abstract

Whilst in recent years sports studies have addressed the calls 'to bring the body back in' to theorisations of sport and physical activity, the 'promise of phenomenology' remains largely under-realised with regard to sporting embodiment. Relatively few accounts are grounded in the 'flesh' of the lived sporting body, and phenomenology offers a powerful framework for such analysis. A wide-ranging, multi-stranded, and interpretatively contested perspective, phenomenology in general has been taken up and utilised in very different ways within different disciplinary fields. The purpose of this article is to consider some selected phenomenological threads, key qualities of the phenomenological method, and the potential for existentialist phenomenology in particular to contribute fresh perspectives to the sociological study of embodiment in sport and exercise. It offers one way to convey the 'essences', corporeal immediacy and textured sensuosity of the lived sporting body.The use of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) is also critically addressed.

Feminist Phenomenology and the Woman in the Running Body

“…Different ontological and epistemological positions underlie the many and complex strands of the 'tangled web of phenomenology' (Ehrich 1999: 20) and here I can only touch upon this complex, protean and nuanced perspective (see Allen-Collinson, 2009, for a recent overview in relation to sports studies). Inevitably, much of the richness and complexity is lost in such a brief resumé, and as Spiegelberg (1982) Husserl's (1983Husserl's ( [1913) Ideas and subsequent work.…”

“…Hall 1996;Wearing 1998). There remains, however, a relative lacuna in relation to embodied research on the lived experiences of the sporting body from a phenomenological perspective (Hockey and Allen-Collinson 2007;Allen-Collinson 2009). Wacquant (2004) highlights a need to conduct research not only of the body (as an object of study), but also from the body -using the body as a tool of inquiry.…”

“…To date, studies of sporting experience employing a phenomenological theoretical framework remain relatively under-developed (Kerry and Armour 2000;Allen-Collinson 2009), although a literature is gradually developing. The following studies provide just a flavour of this oeuvre, drawing primarily upon existential phenomenology, particularly…”

Opening up dialogues and airways: using vignettes to enrich asthma understandings in sport and exercise

“…Phenomenology nowadays comprises a complex array of different traditions (see Allen-Collinson 2009). In general, however, it examines lived experience (Erlebnis), to identify structures or patterns of experience via the phenomenological method, which employs the techniques of epochē and reduction.…”

“…Despite offering much promise, as Goldenberg (2010) argues, the early forms of medical phenomenology were somewhat weak on the issue of embodiment, and consequently a problematic 'absent body' (Leder 1990) often tacitly operated. As we argue below, combining sociological insights and those of existential phenomenology, with its strong focus on embodiment, can provide us with a potent theoretical and methodological framework (Allen-Collinson 2009 6 | P a g e somatic ways of knowing -often developed over a considerable period of time -and integrating this experiential knowledge with the professional knowledge of health and exercise specialists, offers a powerful synthesis. This combination can be used to develop better treatment modalities for those with asthma, which are individually tailored, relevant and workable within people's own life-worlds.…”