Cover not available
Part of
Moving Bodies in Interaction – Interacting Bodies in Motion: Intercorporeality, interkinesthesia, and enaction in sports
Edited by Christian Meyer and Ulrich v. Wedelstaedt
[Advances in Interaction Studies 8] 2017
► pp. 57–91

Chapter 3
Intercorporeality and interkinesthetic gestalts in handball

In social theory, several concepts have been suggested for the description of the resources that actors employ to produce joint actions. Taking into account the fast pace and blind understanding genuine tor sportive interaction and avoiding behaviorist or intentionalist vocabularies, the chapter draws on the concept of “kinesthetic gestalts” (Bewegungsgestalten) that has been coined by a group of psychologists in the early 1930th in Leipzig, Germany. The chapter integrates the concept of kinesthetic gestalt into the ethnomethodological study of embodied practices to describe practices employed by handball players to produce a recognizable activity – i.e., resources to generate recognizable actions and resources to recognize the actions of others as actions of a specific kind. The goal of this chapter is to systematize team sports gestalts derived from empirical analysis. To do so, the chapter analyses a range of different situations and the formation of a variety of kinesthetic gestalts as they occur in handball. At the end of the chapter, we identify the particular social preconditions that are required for a team to be able to produce effective gestalts.

Keywords: kinesthetic gestalts, ethnomethodology, intercorporeality, social coordination, sports
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Practice theory
  • Kinesthetic and interkinesthetic gestalts
  • Intercorporeality and interkinesthetic gestalts in handball
    • A typical kinesthetic gestalt in handball
    • The interkinesthetic gestalt of a handball move
    • The production of intercorporeality and interkinesthesia in a handball team
    • Upholding interkinesthetic gestalts
    • The failed accomplishment of an interkinesthetic gestalt
    • An antagonistic interkinesthetic gestalt
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Transcription signs used
Published online: 14 August 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ais.8.03vwe
References
Bratman, M.
(1992) Shared Cooperative Activity. The Philosophical Review 101, 2: 327–341. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Collins, R.
(2009) Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Drill, R.
(1933) Der Hammerschlag. Neue Psychologische Studien 9 (2): 139–208.Google Scholar
Garfinkel, H.
(1967) Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Gilbert, M.
(1990) Walking Together: A Paradigmatic Social Phenomenon. Midwest Studies In Philosophy 15(1): 1–14. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goffman, E.
(1981) Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Heath, C.
(1986) Body Movement and Speech in Medical Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Joas, H.
(1996) The Creativity of Action. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kendon, A.
2004 Gesture. Visible Action as Utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, M.
(2011) Le monde sensible et le monde d’expression. Cours au Collège de France. Notes 1953. Geneva: Métis Presses.Google Scholar
Meyer, C. & Ulrich v. Wedelstaedt
(2013) Skopische Sozialität: Sichtbarkeitsregime und visuelle Praktiken im Boxen. Soziale Welt 64 (special issue „Visuelle Soziologie“, ed. by A. Baer & B. Schnettler): Seite 69–95. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2014) Körper und ihre Individuen – Distributing Motivation, Koordination und Vergemeinschaftung im Spitzensport. In: M. Löw (ed.): Vielfalt und Zusammenhalt. Verhandlungen des 36. Kongresses der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie in Bochum und Dortmund 2012. Frankfurt am Main: Campus, Sek57_2.Google Scholar
(2015) Teamsubjekte: Rituelle Körpertechniken und Formen der Vergemeinschaftung im Spitzensport. In: R. Gugutzer & M. Staack (eds.): Rituale und Körper. Sozial- und kulturwissenschaftliche Zugänge und Analysen. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.Google Scholar
forthc.). Multiparty Coordination under Time Pressure: The Social Organization of Handball Team Time-Out Activities. In: C. Gerhard & E. Reber eds. Embodied Activities in Talk – Talk in Embodied Activities
Parsons, T., Robert F. Bales & Edward A. Shils
1953 Working Papers in the Theory of Action. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Peirce, C.
(1993) Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition – Volume 5. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Reckwitz, A.
(2003) Grundelemente einer Theorie sozialer Praktiken. Eine sozialtheoretische Perspektive. Zeitschrift für Soziologie 32 (4): 282–301. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schatzki, Theodore R.
(2003) A New Societist Social Ontology. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 33, 2: 174–202 DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2002) The Site of the Social. A Philosophical Account of the Constitution of Social Life and Change. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
(2012) A primer on practices: Theory and research. In Practice-Based Education. Perspectives and Strategies. edited by J. Higgs et al., Rotterdam: Sense, 13–26.Google Scholar
Sheets-Johnstone, M.
(2009) The Corporeal Turn: An Interdisciplinary Reader. Exeter: Imprint Academic.Google Scholar
Stuart, S.
(2012) Enkinaesthesia: the essential sensuous background for co-agency. In: Radman, Z. (ed.) Knowing without Thinking: Mind, Action, Cognition and the Phenomenon of the Background. Series: New directions in philosophy and cognitive science. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan: 167–186.Google Scholar
Voigt, E.
(1933) Über den Aufbau von Bewegungsgestalten. Neue Psychologische Studien 9 (1): 1–32.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 9 other publications

Biehl, Brigitte & Christina Volkmann
2019. ‘Spirits, dancing in the flesh’: choreography and organisation. Culture and Organization 25:4 ► pp. 284 ff. DOI logo
Gugutzer, Robert
2024. Hermann Schmitz and the ”New Phenomenology of sports”. A programmatic outline. Sport, Ethics and Philosophy ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Katila, Julia & Kreeta Niemi
2022. Primary schoolboys’ embodied relationships in the classroom. Research on Children and Social Interaction 6:1 DOI logo
Katila, Julia & Johanne S. Philipsen
2019. The intercorporeality of closing a curtain. Pragmatics & Cognition 26:2-3 ► pp. 167 ff. DOI logo
Katila, Julia & Johanne S. Philipsen
2022. Forms of professional interkinesthesia in nurses' body work: A case study of an infant's stepping. Frontiers in Communication 7 DOI logo
Meyer, Christian & Ulrich v. Wedelstaedt
2019. Multiparty Coordination Under Time Pressure: The Social Organization of Handball Team Time-Out Activities. In Embodied Activities in Face-to-face and Mediated Settings, ► pp. 217 ff. DOI logo
Meyer, Christian & Ulrich v. Wedelstaedt
2022. Semiotic and asemiotic practices in boxing. Semiotica 2022:248 ► pp. 251 ff. DOI logo
Philipsen, Johanne S & Julia Katila
2021. Interkinesthesia in psychotherapy: a resource for exploring body memories and learning new ways of making-a-body. Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy 16:4 ► pp. 302 ff. DOI logo
Staack, Michael & Ulrich v. Wedelstaedt
2024. Wie ist Rhythmus an Interaktion beteiligt? Sportsoziologische Potenziale einer ethnomethodologisch-empirischen Rhythmusforschung. Sport und Gesellschaft 21:1 ► pp. 59 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.