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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
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