Running Rotterdam: on how locals’ participation in running events fosters their sense of place

Abstract

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 2018 edition of the NN Marathon Rotterdam, and two smaller scale, non-commercially oriented running events organized by a local running club in 2017. Based on this qualitative research, the paper demonstrates that individual local runners’ understandings and embodied experience of the physical and social environment is always situated in, and interwoven with, broader social meanings and instances of shared embodiment. 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.