You have full access to this open access article. Building on the insights of scholarship highlighting specific aspects of the forming of place meanings and experiences during running events , this paper aims at applying a more holistic perspective on how meanings attached to and experiences of place by local runners are shaped through both individual and collective sense-making.
Conceptually, the paper combines post- phenomenological and symbolic interactionist approaches. Empirically, the paper focuses on the Dutch city of Rotterdam and draws on extensive fieldwork conducted at the edition of the NN Marathon Rotterdam, and two smaller scale, non-commercially oriented running events organized by a local running club in At the same time, the paper reflects on the methodological challenges faced by research on running events and calls for a more explicit acknowledgement of the multiple character of the running world s studied, and of the trade-offs between the different research techniques applied.
Bezold ; Blin ; Ettema The present paper examines the ways place becomes meaningful to local runners who participate in running events that are partly devised to enable or to enhance a positive experience of the urban environment. Hence, from the literature on running events , the paper primarily considers those accounts that show a n explicit or implicit concern with issues of space, place and belonging.
In some studies, focusing mostly on mass participation events, this concern is part of a political-economic interpretation of the urban condition under advanced capitalism.
However, a larger share of the ever-expanding literature on running events has taken a more bottom-up perspective and has variously highlighted aspects of sociability Sheehan ; Shipway et al. Allen-Collinson ; Hockey ; Lorimer ; Barnfield βhas discussed running in terms of individual and collective embodied experiences e. Cook et al. Overall, existing studies have delivered important insights on how place meanings and experiences are shaped through running events.
