General Anthropology Division

Oral Presentation Session

Movement, Senses and Space in Urban Marathon Running

Presenter(s)

• 

  Jon Mitchell

  Professor Jon P Mitchell
  University of Sussex

This paper is based on fieldwork – including the author’s autoethnographic fieldwork – among those training for and participating in the large-scale urban marathon in Brighton, UK. It argues that such processes generate both space and place, not only through the relatively straightforward spatiality of running and racing routes, but also through the senses. As Stephen Feld has argued, ‘place is sensed, senses are placed…places make sense, senses make place’ (2004: 179). This is equally true of space. Through bodily movement and sensation – glimpsed visions along the route; the smell and touch of weather and atmosphere; the balance and proprioceptive challenges of gradient and road surface – runners generate a sense of space and place that transforms the city.