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

By Jacquelyn Allen-Collinson. 2009

309 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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 is also critically addressed.

Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Gender Studies, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/943bfa02dc901096c976ecc468fc22211c12eaae

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Citations in the corpus

A meta-study of athletic identity research in sport psychology: Current status and future directions (2016, background): “Second, in studies using phenomenology, there was minimal engagement with the central concepts of phenomenology, including intentionality, lived experience, essences, and embodiment (see also the critique of Allen-Collinson, 2009).”
Playing together without communicating? A pre-reflective and enactive account of joint musical performance (2015, methodology): “The detailed pragmatics of this interview methodology can be found in Brinkmann and Kvale (2014), Allen-Collinson (2009), and Hammersley and Atkinson (2007).”
The search for freedom in extreme sports : a phenomenological exploration (2013, methodology): “M AN US CR IP T AC CE PT ED ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT FREEDOM IN EXTREME SPORTS 12 The Interviews An hermeneutic phenomenological approach was adopted (Allen-Collinson, 2009; Brymer, 2010; Brymer & Gray, 2010; Brymer & Schweitzer, 2012) following recommendations by van Manen (1997a, 1997b).”
Feeling the way: Notes toward a haptic phenomenology of distance running and scuba diving (2011, methodology): “Whilst originating in philosophy, forms of phenomenology have been taken up and utilized in a myriad of ways within different disciplines such as sociology and anthropology (Katz and Csordas, 2003), including sports sciences and sports studies (see Allen-Collinson, 2009a; Kerry and Armour, 2000). Of”