Search

This article draws on analysis of data generated by way of an ethnography of fell running in the English Lake District and suggests that participants who have lived and run in the area for many years experience a particular mode of aesthetic. The Lake District has long been valued for its outstanding scenery represented in the aesthetic of the picturesque comprising relatively static landscapes that should be conserved. Established fell runners who have run in the area for many decades apprehend and appreciate the landscape in more complex, rooted and situated ways. The anthropologist Ingold, distinguishes between landscape and landsceppan,and this insight is instructive for grasping the way in which the runners do not simply scope scenery but work with the land: they shape it and are shaped by it. Fell runners are elements within the living environment and along with walls, sheep, becks, sun, rain - what Ingold evocatively calls the 'weather-world' - are mobile. Movement is central to their aesthetic,they enjoy not so much the scenic but rather a fellsceppan and do so through their fast eye-gait-footwork and their lively, variable occupation with the terrain. The fells infiltrate and interpenetrate the runners and movement through the fells generates a somatic aesthetic. The pleasure in turn breeds existential capital an embodied gratification that serves as an attractor that binds those who appreciate feelings of being alive with and in the fells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents findings from an ethnography of fell running in the English Lake District. A provocative concept – existential capital – is proposed to underscore the profits acquired from fell running as an embodied technique, and as a means of defining the shared passions within the field. These gains are acquired through corporeal techniques that require sustained physical effort, embodied vigilance, and knowledge of an environment that is topographically challenging and aesthetically arresting. The visceral pleasures intrinsic to existential capital are appreciated by those within the field and this, in turn, means that this solitary sport gives rise to an intense sociality that ‘only a runner can understand’. Field analysis conventionally focuses on struggles; it is suggested here that a focus on what is shared allows us to understand how a field gains an identity. Thus the notion of existential capital highlights the field as passionately defined in ways that challenge the instrumentalism inherent to conventional modes of field analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]