This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Hockey, J. Articles by Collinson, J. A. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Grasping the Phenomenology of Sporting Bodies

University of Gloucestershire, UK, jhockey{at}glos.ac.uk

Jacquelyn Allen Collinson

University of Exeter, UK, j.allencollinson{at}exeter.ac.uk

The last two decades have witnessed a vast expansion in research and writing on the sociology of the body and on issues of embodiment. Indeed, both sociology in general and the sociology of sport specifically have well heeded the long-standing and vociferous calls `to bring the body back in' to social theory. It seems particularly curious therefore that the sociology of sport has to date addressed this primarily at a certain abstract, theoretical level, with relatively few accounts to be found that are truly grounded in the corporeal realities of the lived sporting body; a `carnal sociology' of sport, to borrow Crossley's (1995) expression. To portray and understand more fully this kind of embodied perspective, it is argued, demands engaging with the phenomenology of the body, and this article seeks to contribute to a small but growing literature providing this particular form of `embodied' analysis of the body in sport. Here we identify some useful intellectual resources for developing a phenomenology of sporting experience, specifically its sensory elements, and also subsequently examine the potential for its evocative portrayal and effective analysis via different kinds of textual forms.

Key Words: embodiment • phenomenology • sociology of the sporting body • the senses

International Review for the Sociology of Sport, Vol. 42, No. 2, 115-131 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1012690207084747


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?