“Parkour can be understood as a way to recapture moments of non-alienated human experience in urban space”. This is a position advanced in Dr Signe Højbjerre Larsen’s recent article “Parkour: playing the modern, accelerated city“. She visited the Meaningful Sport podcast to share insights on the history, culture and meanings that parkour holds for practitioners.
Parkour is a movement culture where practitioners use urban spaces and obstacles – benches, rails, buildings – for practising a variety of often impressive movements. Its popularity has exploded in the recent years. For example, in Denmark, it is also a part of physical education.
In our conversation with Signe, she shares her personal journey in parkour as well as the exciting research that she has conducted in the past 10 years.
In the first part, we also explore the sportification and institutionalisation of parkour and how practitioners have responded to these processes. For example, institutionalisation has made the practice available to more people, but is there a danger that some of the core values and meanings are lost in the process?
Part 1 here:
In the second part, we moved on to exploring Signe’s most recent article Parkour: playing the modern, accelerated city (2021, Journal of the Philosophy of Sport). In the article, she explores how and why parkour can offer non-alienated experiences in urban spaces.
To understand this claim, we first explore why modern life in the city can be alienating. To answer this question, as well as to theorise non-alienated experience, Signe draws on Hartmut Rosa’s theory of resonance.
The main section of our discussion focuses on parkour practitioners and how ugly urban spaces are transformed into attractive playgrounds through the parkour practice.
If you’re interested in the idea of ‘resonance’, the article by Simon Susen The Resonance of Resonance: Critical Theory as a Sociology of World-Relations? is a good place to start exploring!
Part 2 here:
Dr Signe Højbjerre Larsen is an Associate Professor at the Department of Sports Science and Clinical Biomechanics at the University of Southern Denmark. Her research has focused on lifestyle sports and play, as well the institutionalisation of these activities.
In addition to her exciting academic work, Signe has also featured in “My Playground“, a documentary that explores how parkour has changed perceptions of urban space.
You can follow Signe on Twitter @signehoj
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