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. 149–171

Chapter 6
Rock climbers’ communicative and sensory practices

Routine intercorporeality between climbers, rock, and auxiliary technologies

This chapter, following Allen-Collinson & Hockey (2011), focuses on intercorporeal sensory perception in sport through verbal, haptic, ocular, and other forms of interaction as displayed and communicated by rock climbers in collaborative (en)action. It takes an ethnomethodological based video-analytic ethnographic approach, using video clips of rock climbers in collaborative (en)action to portray their verbal and non-verbal communicative and intercorporeal mundane practices. The research is based upon participant (my own, if non-expert, climbing) and non-participant observation (watching various others climb). Also interviews and video recordings of rock climbers at various climbing sites in Northumberland, Snowdonia, the Lake District and Yorkshire in the United Kingdom were conducted. Following a brief introduction to rock climbing in general, rock climbing is then discussed as an intercoproreal sporting activity after which the argument for an ethnomethodological approach to its study in this case is then made.

This paper then uses three examples of rock climbing activities: (1) two climbers discussing with a guidebook the various routes on short crag face which they intend to climb; (2) two climbers discussing a route on a boulder route which one then climbs ‘unassisted’; and lastly (3), a quarry sports climb upon which two climbers are top roping. From these we will build up a series of brief analytic descriptions of intercorporeal enaction of knowledge and practices in rock climbing. Practices, which are both verbal and non-verbal with various types of intercorporeal enaction. Thematic to the ensuing descriptions is the role of auxiliary technologies, that alongside the climbers and the rock itself, form part of the intercorporeal matrix. It will be argued that intercorporeal enaction when expertly performed allows that practical action to ‘disappear’ from the content of the ongoing verbal interaction. While the intercorporeal enaction is dropped as a conversational topic, with other non-immediate topics replacing it, the on-going physical enaction practices are still key to understanding members’ intercorporeal enaction of climbing and its performativity.

Keywords: rock climbing, ethnomethodology, haptic, interaction, inter-corporeal, materiality, senses
Article outline
  • 1.Rock climbing: An introduction
  • 2.Rock climbing as intercorporeal practice
  • 3.An ethnomethodological approach to rock climbing and intercorporeality
  • 4.Intercorporeal enaction: The lived work of climbing
    • 4.1Example 1: Intercopreal enaction in collaborative assessments
    • 4.2Example 2: Intercorporeal enaction in collaborative climbing
    • 4.3Example 3: Intercorporeal enaction with auxiliary technologies
  • Discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 14 August 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ais.8.06jen
References
Allen-Collinson, J. & Hockey, J.
(2011) Feeling the Way: Notes towards a haptic phenomenology of distance running and scuba diving. Int. Rev. for the Sociology of Sport 46(3), 330–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2015) From a certain point of view: sensorary phenomenological envisioning of running space and place. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 44(1), 63–83. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barratt, P.
(2012) ‘My magic cam’: a more-than-representational account of the climbing assemblage. Area, 44 (1), 46–53. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bogardus, L. M.
(2012) The Bolt Wars: A Social Worlds Perspective on Rock Climbing and Intragroup Conflict. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 41(3) 283–308. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Burke, S. M., Sparkes A. C. & Allen-Collinson, J.
(2008.) High Altitude Climbers as Ethnomethodologists making sense of Cognitive Dissonance: Ethnographic Insights from an Attempt to Scale Mt. Everest. The Sport Psychologist, 22, 336–355. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Coates, S.
(1999) Analysing the Physical: An Ethnomethodological Study of Boxing. Ethnographic Studies, 4, 14–26.Google Scholar
Crossley, N.
(1995) Body Techniques, Agency and Intercorporeality: On Goffman’s Relations in Public. Sociology. 29(1) p133–149. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Earl, John
(ed.) (2004) Northumberland Climbing Guide. Northumberland: Northumberland Mountaineering Club.Google Scholar
Eden, S. & Barratt, P.
(2010) Outdoor versus indoors? Angling ponds, climbing walls and changing expectations of environmental leisure. Area, 42(40), 487–493. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jenkings, K. N.
(2013) Playing Dangerously: An Ethnomethodological View upon Rock Climbing. In P. Tolmie, & M. Rouncefield (eds.), Ethnomethodology at Play (191–210). Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Jenkings, K. N., & Barber, N.
(2006) Same evidence, different meanings: Transformation of textual evidence in hospital new drugs committees. Text and Talk, 26(2), 169–189. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fischer, S.
(2007) Social Ecology and the Flesh. In S. L. Cataldi & W. S. Hamrick (eds), Merleau-Ponty and Environmental Philosophy (203–216). New York: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Garfinkel, H.
(1967) Studies in ethnomethodology. Engelwood Cliff: Pentice-Hall.Google Scholar
(2002) Ethnomethodology’s Program. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Girton, G. D.
(1986) Kung Fu: toward a praxiological hermeneutic of the martial arts. In H. Garfinkel (ed.) Ethnomethodological Studies of Work (60–91). London: RKP.Google Scholar
Hennion, A.
(2007) Things that hold us together. Cultural Sociology, 1 (1), 97–114. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heywood, I.
(2006) Climbing Monsters: Excess and Restraint in Contemporary Rock climbing. Leisure Studies. 25(4) 455–467. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heritage, J.
(1984) Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Hockey, John C.
(2009) Mundane Ritual Practices and Distance Running. Journal of Ritual Studies, 23(2). pp. 77–88. ISSN 0890-1112.Google Scholar
Hockey, J. & Allen-Collinson, J.
(2009) The sensorium at work: the sensory phenomenology of the working body. The Sociological Review. 55(2), 217–239. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jung, H. Y.
(2007) Merleau-Pony’s Transversal Geophilosphy and Sinic Aesthetics of Nature. In S. L. Cataldi & W. S. Hamrick (eds), Merleau-Ponty and Environmental Philosophy (235–257). New York: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Kiewa, J.
(2002) Traditional Climbing: metaphor of resistance or matanarrative of oppression? Leisure Studies, 21, 145–161. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
de Leseleuc, E., Gleyse, J., & Marcellini, A.
(2002) The Practice of Sport as political Expression. International Sociology, 17(1), 73–90. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lewis, N.
(2000) The climbing body, nature and the experience of modernity. Body and Society, 6(3–4), 58–80. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Liberman, K.
(2007) An Inquiry into the Intercorporeal Relations Between Humans and the Earth In S. L. Cataldi & W. S. Hamrick (eds), Merleau-Ponty and Environmental Philosophy (37–49). New York: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
(2013) More Studies in Ethnomethodology. New York: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Livingston, E.
(1987) Making sense of ethnomethodology. RKP: London.Google Scholar
Lynch, M.
(1993) Scientific Practice and Ordinary Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lyng, S.
(2005) Edgework: The sociology of risk-taking. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, M.
(2001) Phenomenology of Perception, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Robinson, V.
(2008) Everyday Masculinities and Extreme Sport: Male Identity and Rock Climbing. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Stebbins, R. A.
(1992) Amateurs, Professionals and Serious Leisure. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press.Google Scholar
(1993) Social world, life-style, and serious leisure: towards a mesosocial analysis. World Leisure and Recreation, 35, 23–26. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tejada-Flores, L.
([1967]1978) The Games Climbers Play. In K. Wilson (ed.) The Games Climbers Play (19–27) London: Baton Wicks.Google Scholar
Tomie, P. & Crabtree, A.
(2013) A Day Out in the Country In P. Tolmie, & M. Rouncefield (eds.), Ethnomethodology at Play (159–190). Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Treanor, B.
(2010) High Aspirations: Climbing and Self-Cultivation, In S. Schmid (ed.) Climbing: Philosopy for Everyone (67–80). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vom Lehn, D.
(2014) Harold Garfinkel: The creation and development of ethnomethodology. Walnut Creek, California: Left Coast PressGoogle Scholar
Wittgenstein, L.
(1992) Philosophical Investigation. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 6 other publications

Allen-Collinson, Jacquelyn, Dona L. Hall & Patricia C. Jackman
2023. Intercorporeality in visually impaired running-together: Auditory attunement and somatic empathy. The Sociological Review ► pp. 003802612311634 ff. DOI logo
Cook, Richard & John Hockey
2023. Gravel cycling craft and the senses: scenes, sounds, vibrations, fatigue and typifications on off-road tracks. The Senses and Society ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Due, Brian L. & Louise Lüchow
2023. The Intelligibility of Haptic Perception in Instructional Sequences: When Visually Impaired People Achieve Object Understanding. Human Studies DOI logo
Ehmer, Oliver & Geert Brône
2021. Instructing embodied knowledge: multimodal approaches to interactive practices for knowledge constitution. Linguistics Vanguard 7:s4 DOI logo
Simone, Monica & Renata Galatolo
2023. The situated deployment of the Italian presentative (e) hai. . ., ‘(and) you have. . .’ within routinized multimodal Gestalts in route mapping with visually impaired climbers. Discourse Studies 25:1 ► pp. 89 ff. DOI logo
Woermann, Niklas
2018. Focusing ethnography: theory and recommendations for effectively combining video and ethnographic research. Journal of Marketing Management 34:5-6 ► pp. 459 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 6 may 2023. 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.