Physical Culture, Ethnography and the Body

Theory, Method and Praxis

Michael D. Giardina, Michele K. Donnelly, Michael D. Giardina, Michele K. Donnelly

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138290068
• eBook ISBN: 9781351970594
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The corporeal turn toward critical, empirically grounded studies of the body is transforming the way we research physical culture, most evidently in the study of sport. This book brings together original insights on contemporary physical culture from key figures working in a variety of disciplines, offering a wealth of different theoretical and philosophical ways of engaging with the body while never losing site of the material form of the research act itself.

Contributors spanning the disciplines of sociology, anthropology, communications, and sport studies highlight conceptual, methodological, and empirical approaches to the body that include observant-participation, feminist ethnography, autoethnography, physical cultural studies, and phenomenology. They provide vivid case studies of embodied research on topics including basketball, boxing, cycling, dance, fashion modelling and virtual gaming. This international collection not only reflects on the most important recent developments in embodied research practices, but also looks forward to the continuing importance of the body as a focus for research and the possibilities this presents for studies of the active, moving body in physical culture and beyond.

Physical Culture, Ethnography and the Body: Theory, method and praxis is fascinating reading for all those interested in physical cultural studies, the sociology of sport and leisure, physical education or the body.

Part I

Theoretical Movements

Chapter 1

Sporting embodiments

Sports studies and the (continuing) promise of phenomenology

Jacquelyn Allen-Collinson

Introduction

Whilst in recent years sports studies have undoubtedly taken to heart vociferous calls ‘to bring the body back in’ to theorisations of sport and physical activity, the ‘promise of phenomenology’ (Kerry & Armour 2000) remains largely under-realised with regard to sporting embodiment. There are relatively few accounts truly grounded in the ‘flesh’ of the lived sporting body, and phenomenology offers a powerful framework for such description and analysis. Phenomenology, derived from the Greek ‘phainomenon’, is the study of phenomena, things as they present themselves to, and are perceived in our consciousness.¹ Kvale (1996, p. 53) describes it as an approach: ‘interested in elucidating both that which appears and the manner in which it appears. It studies the subjects’ perspectives of their world; their essential meanings’. The concern with subjectivity, first-person accounts, experience and meaning has, however, sometimes resulted in phenomenology being erroneously conflated with qualitative research in general, despite its specific philosophical roots and ethos. Described as arguably the major philosophical movement of the twentieth century (Embree and Mohanty 1997, p. 1), modern phenomenology emerged from the work of Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), and now spans a wide-ranging, multi-stranded and interpretatively contested set of perspectives falling under its general rubric. Even one of the key exponents of existentialist philosophy, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2001, p. vii), noted that the question of what phenomenology actually is, had by no means been answered. Part of the problem lies perhaps in the different ontological and epistemological positions underlying the distinctive strands of phenomenology.

Whilst originating in philosophy, forms of phenomenology have been taken up and utilised in a myriad of ways by different disciplines and subjects. In general, though, phenomenology seeks highly detailed, in-depth descriptions of subjective human experiences in specific contexts, and aspires to reveal their ‘essences’ (described below), the essential, but always situated, structures of experience as they appear to consciousness. This chapter gives a brief introduction to phenomenology, and aims to: (1) provide a brief overview of key phenomenological strands; (2) identify central characteristics or qualities of the phenomenological method; (3) consider some of the ways in which phenomenology has been operationalised, including within sports and exercise studies, and in the application of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA); and (4) examine the potential of existentialist phenomenology in particular to offer rich analyses of sporting embodiment that evocatively portray the multi-textured experiences of the lived sporting body.

The focus on phenomenology, and the ‘lived body’ (Leib), the body as linking self and world in an ongoing dynamic inter-relationship, the body of everyday experience, is not, it should be stressed, to advocate some form of idealist, or ‘every wo/man’, universalist analysis. It is rather to suggest some ways in which phenomenologically inspired insights might be brought to bear on the study of situated sporting experiences. Criticisms of phenomenology as failing to acknowledge sufficiently the power of social-structural constraints upon individuals, interactions and relationships² have been addressed by many forms of more ‘social’ phenomenological analysis that recognise the structurally influenced, historically specific and socially situated nature of human experience, the intersectionality of identities and indeed the centrality of relationships within ‘human (inter)existence’ (Adams 2007, p. 24). Although departing from its original ‘pure’ Husserlian form, more sociologised forms of phenomenology incorporate and develop insights from other theoretical frameworks such as feminism (e.g. Young 1980, 1998, Bartky 1990, Butler 1997), queer studies (e.g. Grosz 1994, Ahmed 2007), critical sociology (Hughson and Inglis 2002) and the phenomenology of ‘race’ (Alcoff 1999), to name a few. For, in addition to overcoming Cartesian mind-body dualism and advancing detailed, grounded descriptions of phenomena (two of Husserl’s original purposes), phenomenology also provides a stance on embodiment that incorporates conceptions of bodies and action as socially and historically located, socially related and interacting from particular structural standpoints. Our bodies are thus acknowledged to be gendered, classed, ‘sexually oriented’, aged, ‘raced’, with differing degrees of dis/ability and corporeal variation or in Shildrick’s (2001) specific term ‘monstrosity’, and not always singular or individuated (Tyler 2001).

Phenomenology: key movements

Philosophical phenomenology is complex, mutable, multi-stranded, nuanced and contested, and this chapter can provide only a brief, schematic overview; a flavour of the perspective rather than any detailed analysis. Some of the richness, complexity and tensions are inevitably lost in a résumé such as this. Modern phenomenology as a philosophical stance was originally developed by Husserl (1931) in an attempt to remedy the inadequacies of ‘scientific’, ‘objective’ approaches to studying the nature of human beings and existence. Husserl wanted to acknowledge and address the subjectivity of human experience, which for him constituted the basis of all knowledge. Embree and Mohanty (1997) posit four specific tendencies within the phenomenology movement: realist, constitutive, existentialist and hermeneutic. A brief description of the latter three strands, as particularly apposite to sports studies, is provided below, before focusing specifically on the relevance of existentialist phenomenology and Merleau-Ponty’s work for the investigation of sporting embodiment. It should be noted, however, that the strands portrayed here in reality are overlapping and intertwined, and the work of some theorists transcends categories. Labelling can be descriptively useful but also restrictive, and phenomenology is a rich, complex, contested and protean perspective; truly a tangled web in Ehrich’s (1999) evocative imagery.

Constitutive/transcendental phenomenology

Constitutive/transcendental phenomenology are terms applied to Husserl’s descriptive phenomenology, which underwent substantial rethinking as his work developed. As Embree and Mohanty (1997) indicate, constitutive phenomenology relates broadly to the notion that we are simultaneously in and part of the world into which we are born, that we are aware of, have an ‘idea’ of, act on the world and ‘constitute’ ourselves and that world. Husserl’s phenomenology has also been termed ‘transcendental’, in that it seeks to transcend our tacit presuppositions and taken-for-granted assumptions about phenomena, including ‘scientific’ assumptions, interpretations and abstractions, in order to describe the very ‘essences’ of phenomena as they present themselves in everyday life. Husserl’s phenomenology is epistemological with an idealistic goal, to develop a method to yield absolute essential knowledge or universal laws of facts (Jennings 1986, p. 1235, cited Ehrich 1999, p. 25). He considered phenomenology a rigorous human science that could provide not only detailed descriptions of phenomena but also the ways in which human knowledge is developed, and shared understandings are generated. One of his central ideas was that consciousness is always intentional, directed at something (see Intentionality below).

Whilst acknowledging the role of interpretation, transcendental phenomenology is primarily descriptive, utilising the techniques of ‘epochē’ and ‘reduction’ (defined below) in an attempt to suspend or bracket existing beliefs and presuppositions about a phenomenon prior to its description, in order to arrive at its essential element(s). In Husserl’s terms, this is to return ‘to the things themselves’ (zu den Sachen selbst). Controversially, Husserl believed it was not only possible to bracket one’s own beliefs and assumptions, but also to bracket oneself from the ‘natural world’ via transcendental reduction and thus to attain pure transcendental consciousness. His idealistic notion of ‘transcendental subjectivity’ was perhaps not surprisingly subject to trenchant critique, leading Husserl (1976) to focus in his later work upon shared social reality via the concept of the Lebenswelt – the commonsense lifeworld of everyday experience, intersubjectively constructed. This world is not, however, immediately accessible to analysis because of its tacit, taken-for-grantedness. To access the lifeworld requires, Husserl argued, application of the phenomenological method to identify and bracket the commonsense, everyday assumptions enveloping the essences of experiences. The concept of the lifeworld was further developed by Schutz (1972), whose work in turn was adapted by Garfinkel (1984) in his groundbreaking approach, ethnomethodology. More recently, Giorgi (1985) has contributed a significant and detailed body of work within the general spirit of descriptive phenomenology, predominantly applied in the areas of psychology and nursing. Examples of studies within sport and physical activity that use transcendental phenomenology include Morley’s (2001) study of breath control in yoga, which also contrasts transcendental with existentialist forms of phenomenology, whilst Moe (2004) uses insights derived from both transcendental and more hermeneutic forms of phenomenology to explore processes of skill acquisition in sport.

Hermeneutic phenomenology

Heidegger, Gadamer and Ricoeur are key proponents of hermeneutic phenomenology, an approach that seeks to analyse the context, intention and meaning surrounding a text or representation. Whilst transcendental phenomenology focuses upon the descriptive, hermeneutic phenomenology emphasises the interpretive. Indeed, Heidegger posited that all description is always fundamentally interpretative, strongly rejecting Husserl’s idealistic notion of a transcendental phenomenology, and arguing against the possibility of our being (Sein) as open to bracketing or suspension, given its predating of and pre-eminence over consciousness. Heidegger considered that we are ‘thrown into’ the world, which we experience directly through a kind of encompassing sight – Umsicht – developing a certain know-how or intuitive coping skill. Thus, as Wrathall (2000 cited Moe 2004, p. 219) notes, we do not encounter the world as a set of meaningless, atomistic elements, indeed for things to be intelligible and meaningful to us, they are ‘always already’ (in Heidegger’s terms) integrated into our world via a background of coping practices. Moe (2004, p. 219) quotes the example of grasping for a doorknob, and notes that actions such as this do not become meaningful after atomistic information processing, but are always already meaningful to us, seemingly ‘natural’. This notion of things being intelligible only because they are already in our world schema has also been challenged.

Within hermeneutic phenomenology, Gadamer, one of Heidegger’s students, took on and further explored the latter’s interest in the centrality of language as the fundamental mode of ‘being-in-the-world’. Ricoeur’s form of phenomenology similarly focuses upon the ways in which meanings are deposited and mediated through language, narrative, myth, religion and art, with a particular emphasis on the narrativity of self. Within sports and exercise, hermeneutic phenomenology has been employed, for example, to examine methodological issues in researching child athletes’ experiences of figure skating (Ryba 2008). Whilst hermeneutic phenomenology certainly offers great possibilities for application in the study of the sporting body, it is upon another strand of phenomenology that the chapter primarily focuses – on the existential-phenomenological work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

Existentialist phenomenology and Merleau-Ponty’s perception

Existentialist philosophies in general seek understanding of what it means to be human, cohering around fundamental questions such as whether a human nature exists, what it means to be aware of our own mortality. Early proponents of existentialism were Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, and in the twentieth century, key existentialist writers such as Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre worked closely with Maurice Merleau-Ponty, whose work wedded existentialism and phenomenology (Ehrich 1999, p. 28). Heidegger too is often described as an existential phenomenologist, given the ontological slant of his writings, although he himself did not recognise the existentialist label. Existentialist phenomenology provides a ‘third way’, epistemologically and ontologically speaking, commencing not from the assumption of an objective world ‘out there’, nor from a pure, constituting consciousness, but from a dialogic where world, body and consciousness are all fundamentally intertwined, inter-relating and mutually influencing. One’s own body (le corps propre) is the subject of perception, the standpoint from which all things are perceived and experienced; a concept certainly of salience within studies of sporting embodiment. Phenomena are thus not merely abstract things out there in the world, separate from human consciousness and experience, but are part of our incarnate subjectivity. We have existential unity with the chair (flesh) of the world, and can experience phenomena at a deeply corporeal, pre-reflective, pre- (or perhaps ultra-) linguistic level. Further, in relation to behaviour, it is ‘not directed to the true world or pure being, but to being-for-the animal … a certain manner of treating the world, of “being-in-the-world”’ (Merleau-Ponty 1963, p. 125). Our mode of being is thus based on the union of the ‘psychic’ and the ‘physiological’. As illustrative of Heidegger’s notion of ‘being-in-the-world’ (Dasein, ‘being there’), Merleau-Ponty (1963, p. 77) gives the example of phantom-limb pain; pain that cannot be purely physiological, nor purely psychological because the person is under no illusion of having an actual physical limb, thus expressing an ambivalent mode of being-in-the-world. In his later work, Merleau-Ponty recast the ‘lived body’ of his earlier writings as ‘chair’ (flesh) in order ‘to capture its primordial or elemental character’ (Morley 2001, p. 75), so that ‘being-in-the-world’ then became ‘flesh-of-the-world’, to convey the continuity of world and body.

Existentialist phenomenology also highlights the situatedness of human experience, including gendered experience and behaviour (de Beauvoir 1974, Young 1980), and also, importantly for the analysis of much sporting experience, inter-embodiment, in Merleau-Ponty’s (1969) terminology, ‘intercorporeality’. For it is argued that the experience of embodiment is ‘never a private affair, but is always already mediated by our continual interactions with other human and non-human bodies’ (Weiss 1999, p. 5). Merleau-Ponty’s (1969) focus upon the sensory dimensions of embodiment and his concept of reversibility also have high applicability to studies of sporting embodiment (Hockey and Allen-Collinson 2007). Reversibility refers to the notion that our sense perceptions are reversible: we both touch and are touched, see and are seen, and so on. So Merleau-Ponty (2001, p. 93) suggests that the experience of touching, for example, cannot be understood without reference to the possibility of situational reversal. These possibilities are held in a state of constant inter-relationship, so our embodied subjectivity inheres in both our touching and our tangibility; the two are inextricably intertwined. In relation to sportspeople, such a relationship is not just with other participants but also with objects such as sports equipment and kit, and the general environment – whether air, water, snow, terrain and so on (Hockey and Allen-Collinson 2007).

Phenomenology and embodiment in sport and exercise

These then are just some of the strands of phenomenology, and its potential for the study of sporting embodiment becomes clear when we recall that a primary task of phenomenology ‘is not to denude human beings, but to reawaken ourselves to the idea that we are beings who live with and through bodies’ (Kim 2001, p. 69). As Connell (1995, p. 51) evocatively phrases it: ‘There is an irreducible bodily dimension in experience and practice; the sweat cannot be excluded.’ Given the centrality of the body within sport, it is surprising that, with some notable exceptions, rela...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• List of contributors
• Introduction: Physical culture, ethnography, and the body
• PART 1: Theoretical Movements
• PART II: Methodological movements
• PART III: Empirical movements
• Index