![Sample our Sports and Leisure journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5949/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Sports-Leisure.jpg"})
Abstract
This article offers a literature review on long-distance running, i.e., marathon, ultra-long-distance, and trail running, based on French studies on the sociology of sport. The interest of such a synthesis lies, firstly, in its affording a better understanding of the continued craze for those running disciplines that are now major practices on the sports scene. Secondly, in its presenting to English-speaking sports sociologists the premises and theoretical conceptions which, in France, have examined this growing phenomenon. The articles collected on the theme cover a period of over 30 years, from 1982 to 2015, and were produced by French sports sociologists. The majority of them examine the phenomenon through the question of undertaking such sports. Therefore, it is the question ‘Why do people take up those forms of running?’ which is addressed in this synthesis and around which its presentation is organized.
Cet article propose une revue de littérature sur les courses à pied d’endurance : marathon, ultrafond et ultra-trail, à partir des travaux français de sociologie du sport. L’intérêt de cette synthèse est, d’une part, de mieux comprendre l’engouement continu des pratiquants dans ces disciplines de course, qui aujourd’hui sont des pratiques incontournables du paysage sportif et, d’autre part, de présenter à la sociologie du sport de langue anglaise les postulats et conceptions théoriques qui, en France, ont examiné ce phénoméne grandissant. Les articles collectés sur ce thème s’échelonnent sur une période d’un peu plus de 30 ans, de 1982 à 2015, et ont été produits par des sociologues du sport français. Dans leur majorité, ils examinent le phénomène à travers la question de l’engagement dans ces pratiques sportives. C’est donc cette question : « Pourquoi les gens s’engagent-ils dans ces pratiques de courses? », qui est reprise dans cette synthèse et qui organise sa présentation.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. In this article, the terminology leaves out track-racing practices and jogging. In the former, although certain track-racing practices do involve endurance, they are too strongly linked with the world of athletics to belong in the trend we intend to describe. As for the latter, jogging is a practice in which engagement in endurance is too low to compare with the practices under study, i.e. semi-marathon, trail running, etc.
2. In the field of the sociology of sport in English, the same intention has emerged lately with the publication of Endurance Running: A Socio-Cultural Examination (Bridel, Markula, & Denison, Citation2016a).
3. In the course of the last 30 years, the limits of the sociology of sports in France have moved. Although the space it occupies within French sociology is still relatively small (Collinet, Citation2002), it has expanded from 1980 as a result of the creation of multidisciplinary laboratories within the Sciences and Techniques of Physical and Sports Activities (Sciences et Techniques des Activités Physiques et Sportives – STAPS) departments in universities (Collinet et Payré, Citation2003). In such laboratories, sociologists of sports have gathered and actively worked on the subject. To date, although the part it plays within French sociology is still quite small, the space has expanded beyond the realm of studies in general sociology that incidentally spill over into sports; the sociology of sports is now used for standard reference and its productions are neither questioned nor challenged by other areas of general sociology such as culture, labor, leisure, etc.
4. The articles were collected in two phases. In the first phase, we used a broad scan and looked up Google Scholar and specialized national (Cairn info, Persee.fr, etc.) and international (Elsevier, Sage, Taylor & Francis, etc.) databases. French sociologists of sports may have published in English on the subject, but we did not find any. Two families of keywords were used for the research. One included the terms ‘sociology, sport, France’ (sociologie, sport, France), and the other ‘running, endurance running, long-endurance running, long-time running, semi-marathon, trail, ultra-trail, ultra-long-distance, raid’ (course à pied, course d’endurance, course de longue endurance, course de longue durée, semi-marathon, marathon, trail, ultra-trail, ultrafond, raid). We then combined the two families of keywords to sweep across the field to be explored, translating those combinations into English for the international databases. In the second phase, we scrutinized the bibliographies of the collected documents for references that the search engines may have failed to spot. In the course of the second phase we had to look into archives and search the catalogue of the Bibliothèques Universitaires de France. That was because a few of the publications identified were accessible only from certain libraries, such as Jacques Defrance’s ‘La course libre ou le monde athlétique renversé. Sociologie des représentations collectives de deux variantes de la course à pied’ (Free running or the athletics world overturned. A sociology of the collective representations of two variants of running, Citation1985), which was published in issue number 8 of the journal Travaux et Recherches en EPS, of which very few copies were printed.
5. In France ‘cross-country’ is also commonly known as fond (long-distance running).
6. Also known in France as ultrafond (ultra-long-distance running). https://www.sportbuzzbusiness.fr/caisse-depargne-kantar-media-uniteam-sport-decryptent-pratique-du-running-en-france.html
7. This discipline is a mountain race performed at altitudes of over 2000 meters, with slopes over 30% and some climbing difficulties.
8. For example, the agencies KantarSport and Uniteam Sport, who were commissioned to investigate the long-distance running practices among the customers of a major French bank, published a ‘barometer of running’ in 2013 (https://www.sportbuzzbusiness.fr/caisse-depargne-kantar-media-uniteam-sport-decryptent-pratique-du-running-en-france.html).
9. The term includes jogging and the whole range from a marathon to trail (Stat-Info, Citation2011, p. 2).
10. Footing and jogging here form a single word, as they are joined by an apostrophe which means ‘and.’
11. These are all ‘scientific’ publications. We have left out of this selection Masters dissertations, theses, and texts for the general public. On the other hand, those 25 texts were written in French by French researchers – ethnologists, sociologists, or sociologists of sports, but it could have been different and we could have included in this corpus the production of a French researcher who wrote in English on those practices. For example, it would have been the case if the article by Sandrine Knobé, ‘Éléments pour une analyse sociologique de l’entrée dans l’ultrafond’ (Elements for a sociological analysis of engagement in ultra-long-distance running), published in 2006 in the bilingual international journal Loisir et Société/ Society and Leisure had not been published in French but in English. If an English-speaking researcher had written on the development of those practices in France, it would have been more difficult to decide on the case. Furthermore, these 25 texts may appear as a modest contribution if compared with the 30 years over which they were published and the number of researchers who currently represent the community of sociologists of sports in France. However, thanks to their publication stretching over a long period of time, their being regularly published, and their sheer number, they form a whole distinctive enough to make up a characteristic theme of the field of the sociology of sports in France.
12. Likewise, the text by Manuel Schotte (Citation2015) was left out. It is entitled ‘Dans la course’ (In the run – building a hierarchy in action) and was published in 2015 in the journal Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales (Proceedings of Social ScienceResearch). It explores the way a hierarchy is built, not what determines engagement in those endurance practices.
13. Although jogging and marathon do not call for the same engagement in endurance, P. Yonnet deals with them both as components of ‘free running.’ We are taking up the same combination to present his thinking, even though jogging, as explained in the first footnote, is not part of our definition of endurance running.
14. In his Citation1985 article entitled ‘Jeux, modes et masses’ (Games, fashion and the masses), Yonnet gives a verbatim account of the article.
15. A.-M. Waser presents a similar argument in her article entitled ‘Du stade à la ville : réinvention de la course à pied’ (From the stadium to town: reinventing running, Citation1998), as she shows how, from the 1970s, the development of leisure standards within running practices – for instance, the standards on pleasure rather than performance (p. 65) – has contributed to mass enthusiasm for the practice.
16. Those interpretations he took up again in this Citation1989 article entitled ‘Un schisme sportif, clivages structurels, scissions et oppositions dans les sports athlétiques, 1960–1980’ (A sports division, structural divides, scissions and oppositions in athletics, 1960–1980).
17. Bourdieu (Citation1979, p. 239), cited in Denzler (1991) ‘Le marathon : une pratique de classe?’
18. Bourdieu (Citation1979, p. 239).
19. From that perspective, Segalen also questions Paul Yonnet’s analyses in his 1982 and 1985 productions, arguing that he indulges in meta-interpretations on the question of engagement when he accounts for the success of endurance running through the crisis of a society deprived of speed, or a society going through energy conservation, or again when he interprets the enthusiasm as the sign of a new religion or religiousness…
20. Or this other quotation in a similar vein: ‘The current enthusiasm for running … is an expression of the culture and urban society … of the staging of oneself, in short, of modernity’ (p. 22).
21. Although they do not expand on that transformation in their writings, both Yonnet and Defrance do mention it: the former notes that ‘every aspect of life is pervaded by sports”’ (Citation1982, p. 9), and the latter that ‘[t]he lack … of any border between sport and daily life has effects on the runner’s relationship to running’ (Citation1989, p. 86).
22. Systèmes des sports et Huit leçons sur le sport(Sports systems and Eight lessons on sport).
23. In a previous article he wrote in collaboration with B. Lapeyronie, he defined it as a quest for personal fulfillment (Citation2000, p. 163).
24. The series of surveys includes 500 questionnaires administered to the participants during the 2000 Grand Raid as well as a number of semi-directed interviews. The same data and their analysis are to be found in O. Bessy’s general public work entitled Le Grand Raid de La Réunion : à chacun son extrême et un emblème pour tous (The Grand Raid de La Réunion: each to their own idea of the extreme, an emblem for all, Citation2002).
25. The meaning of the term, which means a way of being, of looking, and of self-representing, is explained by Bourdieu in Questions de sociologie (Sociology in Question, Citation1984): ‘The word ethos … refers to an objectively systematic set of dispositions with an ethic dimension, of practical principles’ (p. 133), and may be seen as the merging of a practical system and an axiological one, in which ‘values are movements, ways of standing, walking, speaking’ (p. 134), and, we could add, running….
26. Knobé takes up again a few elements from those two articles in a later publication on performance: ‘La performance au regard de l’effort sportif : quelques réflexions’ (Some thoughts on performance from the viewpoint of sports effort, Citation2008).
27. The undertaking implies such important dimensions of life as human adventure or seeking new challenges.
28. For the time being, I hope that this presentation of the studies in French on the success of endurance races will cause English-speaking researchers interested in the subject to turn their eyes this way; that they find in the tension presented here and the various premises which support it food for enhancing their perspectives and taking on new questions; that they may find in the ‘comparing discrepancy’ (Cefaï, Citation2003, p. 468) thus created a resource to sharpen their reflexivity and refine their judgment on the success of those races. I also hope that this presentation will inspire Francophone and Anglophone researchers into conducting joint projects. As yet, no French sociologist of sport has made a study on the question of endurance running in collaboration with an English-speaking counterpart. And yet importing or exporting premises or theoretical concepts into national contexts other than that in which they were developed is one sure means to assess their scope and improve them, particularly when those premises and concepts are based, as they are in the plural sociologies of the second period, on moments and conditions different from those of present-day democracies. Last, I hope that this literature review will serve to start discussions between authors and that in the process a precious breeding ground for categories, questions and answers, and arguments and counter-arguments will be created which will foster ever more minute examination of those forms of running and their success.