Browsing by Author "Allen-Collinson, J."
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Item Metadata only Close but not too close(2013) Owton, H.; Allen-Collinson, J.Item Metadata only Close But Not Too Close: Friendship as Method(ology) in Ethnographic Research Encounters(SAGE, 2013-07-22) Owton, H.; Allen-Collinson, J.“Friendship as method” is a relatively underexplored—and often unacknowledged—method, even within ethnographic inquiry. In this article, we consider the use of friendship as method in general, and situate this in relation to a specific ethnographic research project, which examined the lived experience of asthma amongst sports participants. The study involved researching individuals with whom the principal researcher had prior existing friendships. Via forms of confessional tales we explore some of the challenges encountered when attempting to negotiate the demands of the dual researcher-friend role, particularly during in-depth interviews. To illustrate our analysis, four sets of tales are examined, cohering around issues of: (1) attachment and when to “let go”; (2) interactional “game-play”; (3) “rescuing” participants; and (4) the need for researcher self-care when “things get too much.” The need to guard against merger with research participants-as-friends is also addressed. In analysing the tales, we draw upon insights derived from symbolic interactional analyses and in particular upon Goffman’s theoretical frameworks on interactional encounters.Item Open Access Conformers, contesters, creators: vignettes of asthma identities and sporting embodiment(2014-09-15) Owton, H.; Allen-Collinson, J.Through a phenomenologically-inspired approach, the purpose of this article is to examine the different ways in which sportspeople experience asthma, a condition that affects 5.4 million people in the UK. To date, sociological phenomenology has been under-utilised both in relation to health and illness experiences and vis-a-vis sporting embodiment. Drawing on in-depth interview data from non-elite sportspeople (n = 14), all of whom had been diagnosed with asthma, ranging in degree of severity, here we explore asthma sporting embodiment via a threefold asthma identity typology. The findings are communicated through vignettes, assembled from participants’ accounts, in order to highlight the multifaceted and multilayered ‘voices’ of sportspeople with asthma. Transforming data in this way can, we argue, resonate with others – both those with asthma and those without – to give a ‘feel’ for asthma experiences and sporting embodiment. This form of typology may be useful as a heuristic framework to assist healthcare and sports professionals in understanding asthma experiences as lived in everyday life, and potentially in developing more appropriate and effective care regimes for sportspeople in order to improve the quality of that everyday life.Item Metadata only In the heat of the moment: a phenomenology of lived heat and ‘intense embodiment’(Body and Society, 2014) Owton, H.; Allen-Collinson, J.In recent years, calls have been made to address the relative dearth of qualitative sociological investigation into the sensory dimensions of embodiment, including within physical cultures. This article contributes to a small, innovative and developing literature utilizing sociological phenomenology to examine sensuous embodiment. Drawing upon data from three research projects, here we explore some of the ‘sensuousities’ of ‘intense embodiment’ experiences as a distance-running-woman and a boxing-woman respectively. Our analysis addresses the relatively unexplored haptic senses, particularly the ‘touch’ of heat. Heat has been argued to constitute a specific sensory mode, a trans-boundary sense. Our findings suggest that ‘lived’ heat’, in our own physical-cultural experiences, has highly proprioceptive elements and is experienced as both a form of touch and as a distinct perceptual mode, dependent upon context. Our analysis coheres around two key themes that emerged as salient: (1) warming up, and (2) thermoregulation, which, in lived experience were encountered as strongly interwoven.Item Metadata only The lived experiences of asthma in sportspeople: phenomenological perspectives(2013-12-01) Owton, H.; Allen-Collinson, J.Item Metadata only Take a deep breath: Asthma, sporting embodiment, the senses and 'auditory work'(SAGE, 2012-12-06) Allen-Collinson, J.; Owton, H.There has been a veritable efflorescence of interest in sporting embodiment in recent years, including more phenomenologically inspired sociological analyses. A sociology of the senses is, however, a very recent sub-discipline, which provides an interesting new dimension to studies of sporting embodiment, focusing inter alia upon the sensory elements of ‘somatic work’: the ways in which we go about making sense of our senses within a socio-cultural (and sub-cultural) framework. The present article contributes to a developing sociological-phenomenological empirical corpus of literature by addressing the lived experience of asthma in non-élite sports participants. Despite the prevalence of asthma and exercise-induced asthma/bronchoconstriction, there is a distinct lacuna in terms of qualitative research into living with asthma, and specifically in relation to sports participation. Here we focus upon the aural dimension of asthma experiences, examining the role of ‘auditory attunement’ and ‘auditory work’ in sporting embodiment.