I was really honoured to give a keynote talk on the Meaningful Sport project at the Qualitative Research in Sport and Exercise (QRSE) early career researcher & student conference last week. It was certainly not easy to narrow down what I wanted to say in 30 minutes. Doing the podcasting in the past year, I have heard so many interesting and diverse perspectives on meaning in sport, physical education and outdoor activities. But I had to leave something out. So these are some of the things that I found important to share:
(1) ‘Meaning’ is such an elusive concept. It seems something that we struggle to pin down or grasp. And as Gunnar Breivik mentioned in the podcast, most of the time it is something we are not aware of. Which makes it so extremely difficult to study it. In her new book The Psychology of Meaning in Life, Tatjana Schnell makes the point that if we ask people about the sources of meaning in their lives, typically we get stereotypical answers that have little reflection behind them. So this is our major challenge in moving our understanding forward in sport and PE.
(2) Our previous work on meaningfulness in sport might have overlooked the potential of challenges and difficulties (the negative) in fostering meaning. Studies in mainstream psychology seem to indicate those experiences can be important. I have written about this in my blog earlier, so I am repeating myself…
(3) It is important to think of threats to meaningfulness in sport and PE, and this is certainly being done. Having little time, I lifted two issues (a) the growing instrumentalization of movement, which we can perhaps think of as a manifestation of the ‘technological age’ as discussed by Heidegger; and (b) the serious inequalities in who can pursue sport and movement as ‘a life project’. There are so many forms of discrimination, bullying and marginalisation in sports cultures that it seems so many are denied a meaningful experience. And only some meanings are validated and supported in our (sport) cultures while others are marginalised.
(4) We always need to challenge our basic starting points if we want to be doing critical inquiry. I asked the questions whether I am making too much out of sport or meaning. Some people do not search for meaning in sport, and some do not search for meaning in life. One of my colleagues once told me that for him sport is more about happiness than meaning (based on how I explained Baumeister et al’s distinction). If we promote meaningful sport, are we wrongly imposing our own perspectives on others?
(5) But then, when searching for meaning, I mentioned sport literature as one source of inspiration. One of my own favourites has been George Sheehan’s Running and Being – The Total Experience. And of course, Alan Sillitoe’s Loneliness of a Long-Distance Runner. This also ties to Kretchmar’s point about learning about the subcultural narratives as one source for fostering meaningfulness.
I received many interesting questions to continue reflecting and developing ideas. I’ve spent about 10 years trying to understand something about sport and meaning, but as I said in the presentation, I feel that I am very much at the early steps of trying to figure things out. The more you try to learn, you understand how little you actually know…
I also wanted to reflect on William James’s ‘sick souls and healthy-minded’ in sports but could not fit that in the presentation. I’ll try to do something around it later on.
The presentation is available here.