Fell running in post‐sport territories

Abstract

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This paper explores the visual, embodied and interactive elements of the post‐sport physical culture(s) of fell running. Fell running is textually represented in the paper as a physical cultural practice with many surface level, or ‘residual’, articulations of mainstream sport, but is deployed by many enthusiasts as a novel praxis of athletic engagement that cultivates communion with the self, others and the environment. By unpacking ethnographic and photo‐elicitation data gleaned through a study of fell running in the English midlands, and drawing from several core concepts in French post‐structural theory, I infographically illustrate the allure of post‐sports like fell running to people who wish to immerse themselves in rather novel contexts of desire‐producing, personally rewarding and spiritual activity. The paper represents how increased recognition and promotion of a broad range of post‐sport cultures within the global athletic ethnosphere might promote mass, and sustained, involvement in physical activity across a range of groups.

Keywords:

• post‐sport
• ethnography
• fell running
• photo‐elicitation
• Virilio

Notes

1. This argument by no means implies that mainstream sports are entirely insignificant in religious or spiritual ways. Parry et al. (2007) and Sing (2004) provide two of the best overviews of how religion and spirituality are often interwoven, in incredibly complex ways, into the practice of (mainstream) sports.

2. For a full discussion of the risk of neoliberalism in North America, see Giroux (2005). Here, I fundamentally and politically agree with Giroux’s arguments regarding the structural and cultural insidiousness of late modern neoliberalism, but still question whether or not the liquid modern (Bauman 2000) ideological bedrock of contemporary neoliberal culture allows for a heightened degree of questioning and withdrawal from modernist sport practices as a matter of personal freedom and moral responsibility. Giroux (2005) might respond by arguing that we must make sport a more inclusive, safe, accessible and difference accepting space; others, including myself, would argue it is prime time to foster an appreciation for a much wider athletic ethnosphere.

3. Anyone familiar with fell running knows there is a considerable culture of serious racing enthusiasts who approach the practice as a mainstream sport. Competitions can be incredibly competitive, and act as feeder systems into international cross‐country and mountain racing challenges and figurations. Like any athletic practice, fell running is not immune to modernist sport ideologies and constructions. This paper in no way implies that fell running is entirely devoid of modernist sport trappings, but rather that a significant population of the runners downplay or even eschew outright the competitive, sporting aspects of the practice.