Abstract

In recent years, there has been a burgeoning of academic interest in exercise embodiment issues, including a developing field of phenomenologically-inspired analyses of the lived-body experience of physical activity and exercise. Calls have been made for researchers to explore the sensory dimension of such embodiment, and a corpus of sensory ethnographic studies is now beginning to grow, focusing on the ways in which people engage in ‘making sense of the senses’ within a socio-cultural framework. This presentation introduces sociological phenomenology / phenomenological sociology and the ways in which it can be used to explore the lived and sensuous experience of engaging in sport and physical cultures. Dr Allen-Collinson draws on data from recent research projects to illustrate the potential of this theoretical and methodological approach.