Intercorporeal enaction and synthrony: the case of distance-running

Whilst there exists a substantial literature focused upon abstract theorizations of sport, at present there is relatively little ethnographic or autoethnographic research within sports studies that focuses on the mundane practices of actually “doing sport” and specifically on “doing sport together”. In sum, the phenomenological ground of how sport is accomplished remains largely uncharted territory for researchers, as recent reviews have indicated (Haldrup & Larsen 2006, Hockey & Allen Collinson 2007, Sparkes 2009, Allen-Collinson 2009). This lacuna applies both to the phenomenology of the lived sporting body and particularly to embodied interaction between sports participants, the finely attuned intercorporeality necessary to accomplish sporting enaction (Di Paolo et al. 2010, Meyer & Wedelstaedt in this volume). There is some research that addresses these two elements, particularly in relation to martial arts of various kinds, for example, mixed martial arts (Spencer 2012, Vaittinen 2014), karate (Masciotra et al. 2001), capoeira (Downey 2005), and also vis-à-vis boxing (Allen-Collinson & Owton 2014), basketball (Rail 1992), rock climbing (Jenkings 2013), and distance running (Allen-Collinson 2008, Hockey 2013) to name a few. It has to be said, however, that the literature synthesizing the phenomenological and the interactional at present remains relatively embryonic.