Weather experiences are currently surprisingly under-explored and under-theorised in sociology and sport sociology, despite the importance of weather in both routine, everyday life and in recreational sporting and physical-cultural contexts. To address this lacuna, here we examine the lived experience of weather, including ‘weather work’ and ‘weather learning’, in our specific physical-cultural worlds of distance-running, triathlon and jogging in the United Kingdom (UK). Drawing on a theoretical framework of phenomenological sociology, and the findings from five separate auto/ethnographic projects, we explore the ‘weather-worlds’ (Ingold, 2010) and weather work involved in our physical-cultural engagement. In so doing, we address ongoing sport sociological concerns with embodiment and somatic, sensory learning and ways of knowing. We highlight how weather work provides a key example of the phenomenological conceptualisation of the mind-body-world nexus in action, with key findings delineating weather learning across the meteorological seasons that contour our British weather-related training.
University of Lincoln, College of Social Science Research
Jacquelyn Allen-Collinson, University of Lincoln, School of Sport and Exercise
George Jennings, Cardiff Metropolitan University
Anu Vattinen, Newcastle University
Helen Owton, The Open University