Whilst in recent years sports studies have addressed the calls ‘to bring the body back in’ to theorisations of sport and physical activity, the ‘promise of phenomenology’ remains largely under‐realised with regard to sporting embodiment. Relatively few accounts are grounded in the ‘flesh’ of the lived sporting body, and phenomenology offers a powerful framework for such analysis. A wide‐ranging, multi‐stranded and interpretatively contested perspective phenomenology in general has been taken up and utilised in very different ways within different disciplinary fields. The purpose of this article is to consider some selected phenomenological threads, key qualities of the phenomenological method and the potential for existentialist phenomenology in particular to contribute fresh perspectives to the sociological study of embodiment in sport and exercise. It offers one way to convey the ‘essences’, corporeal immediacy and textured sensuosity of the lived sporting body. The use of interpretative phenomenological analysis is also critically addressed.

The last two decades have witnessed a vast expansion in research and writing on the sociology of the body and on issues of embodiment. Indeed, both sociology in general and the sociology of sport specifically have well heeded the long-standing and vociferous calls `to bring the body back in' to social theory. It seems particularly curious therefore that the sociology of sport has to date addressed this primarily at a certain abstract, theoretical level, with relatively few accounts to be found that are truly grounded in the corporeal realities of the lived sporting body; a `carnal sociology' of sport, to borrow Crossley's (1995) expression. To portray and understand more fully this kind of embodied perspective, it is argued, demands engaging with the phenomenology of the body, and this article seeks to contribute to a small but growing literature providing this particular form of `embodied' analysis of the body in sport. Here we identify some useful intellectual resources for developing a phenomenology of sporting experience, specifically its sensory elements, and also subsequently examine the potential for its evocative portrayal and effective analysis via different kinds of textual forms.

This article contributes fresh perspectives to the empirical literature on the sociology of the body, and of leisure and identity, by analysing the impact of long‐term injury on the identities of two amateur but serious middle/long‐distance runners. Employing a symbolic interactionist framework, and utilising data derived from a collaborative autoethnographic project, it explores the role of ‘identity work’ in providing continuity of identity during the liminality of long‐term injury and rehabilitation, which poses a fundamental challenge to athletic identity. Specifically, the analysis applies Snow and Anderson’s ( 1995 Snow, D. A. and Anderson, L. 1995. “The problem of identity construction among the homeless”. In Symbolic Interaction: An Introduction to Social Psychology, Edited by: Hermann, N. J. and Reynolds, L. T. New York: General Hall. [Google Scholar] ) and Perinbanayagam’s ( 2000 Perinbanayagam, R. S. 2000. The Presence of Self, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield. [Google Scholar] ) theoretical conceptualisations in order to examine the various forms of identity work undertaken by the injured participants, along the dimensions of materialistic, associative and vocabularic identifications. Such identity work was found to be crucial in sustaining a credible sporting identity in the face of disruption to the running self, and in generating momentum towards the goal of restitution to full running fitness and re‐engagement with a cherished form of leisure.

Along with a resurgence of interest in ‘the body’ within the social sciences generally over the last two decades, in recent years a corpus of sociological research specifically on sporting embodiment has started to develop. Calls have been made to analyse more fully and deeply the sensory dimension of the lived sporting body, including via phenomenological perspectives. This article contributes to this developing literature by bringing to bear insights derived from existential phenomenology on two distinct sporting milieux: middle/long-distance running and scuba diving. As the social sciences in general have been accused of a high degree of ocularcentrism, here we focus upon touch, and specifically upon heat and pressure as two key structures of haptic lived experience.

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.

This article contributes new theoretical perspectives and empirical findings to the conceptualization of occupational liminality. Here, we posit ‘occupational limbo’ as a state distinct from both transitional and permanent liminality; an important analytic distinction in better understanding occupational experiences. In its anthropological sense, liminality refers to a state of being betwixt and between; it is temporary and transitional. Permanent liminality refers to a state of being neither-this-nor-that, or both-this-and-that. We extend this framework in proposing a conceptualization of occupational limbo as always-this-and-never-that, where this is less desirable than that. Based on interviews with 51 teaching-only staff at 20 research-intensive ‘Russell Group’ universities in the United Kingdom, the findings highlight some challenging occupational experiences. Interviewees reported feeling ‘locked-in’ to an uncomfortable state by a set of structural and social barriers often perceived as insurmountable. Teaching-only staff were found to engage in negative and often self-depreciatory identity talk that highlighted a felt inability to cross the līmen to the elevated status of ‘proper academics’. The research findings and the new conceptual framework provide analytic insights with wider application to other occupational spheres, and can thus enhance the understanding not just of teaching-only staff and academics, but also of other workers and managers.