Understanding Movement: A Sociocultural Approach to Exploring Moving Humans

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to outline a sociocultural way of exploring human movement. Our ambition is to develop an analytical framework where moving humans are explored in terms of what it means to move as movements are performed by somebody, for a certain purpose, and in a certain situation. We find this approach in poststructural theorizing, primarily in the work of scholars who emphasize the materiality of the sign, and the performative function of discourse. We will use this approach to engage with motor development, motor ability testing of children, and the results deriving from such practices. In addition, we engage in a critical discussion of some current attempts to complement biomechanical, medical, and psychological ways of understanding movement with phenomenological and sociocultural perspectives. We conclude by stressing the importance of exploring what it could mean to move in an endless range of moves (and bodies and identities).

Keywords:

• Physical education
• motion analysis
• sports sociology
• sports philosophy

Notes

1. We read the poststructuralist work of Foucault and others (e.g., Judith Butler) from the point of view of what Donald Broady (1990) has termed “historical epistemology,” a research strand within twentieth-century French scholarship, including the work of historians of science, such as Gaston Bachelard and Georges Canguilhem; the historical scholars of the Annales school, such as Ferdinand Braudel, Marcel Bloch, and Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie; much-renowned philosophers, such as Foucault; and the cultural sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Historical epistemology, which is closely related to “social epistemology” (see Kirk, 2001), deals with the historical development, or the historical embeddedness, of scientific knowledge. It has also consistently attempted to transgress several conventional dualisms recurring in the history of science: mind/body, subject/object, actor/structure, etc.