Between narrative and practice: Storytelling as a way of knowing how to be in nature

Abstract

This article examines the storytelling practices of adventurers as a means to shape embodied experience. While scholars mostly treat narrative and practice separately, examining them simultaneously reveals their mutual constitution and tensions. Stories often precede the embodied learning that occurs through going into the outdoors. However, they only make sense at the point of the encounter and the experience can change the lesson. Key aspects of the embodied experience often remain unspoken, both due to time delays between the experience and its telling and the inadequacies of language. This analysis is based on interviews, participant observation, and “go-alongs” with adventurers based in Australia and New Zealand.

Fight the biopower! Mixed martial arts as resistance

“…In doing so I employed my body to make sense of this socio-physical world in the same way that the study participants do so to make sense of, and express freedom from, their own daily realities. Both the use and existence of this ‘somatic metamorphism’ has been employed in relation to martial arts research elsewhere (Foster, 2015) and signified a unity or ‘stickiness of experience to the embodied realm’ (Maslen, 2020: 13). This allowed access and a closeness to the participants as people but also their embodied display/expression throughout the gym.…”

“Anxiety or enjoyment, I feel pleasant to welcome them both”: thematic analysis of a Chinese PhD student’s personal growth experiences

“…This study adopted autoethnography to explore my personal experiences as a PhD student, especially the emotional experiences across 4 years. This approach has the advantage of calling up personal embodied experiences ( Maslen, 2022 ), helping to observe and analyze their own emotions ( Buckley, 2015 ), offering an insider perspective, and revealing the meaning of lived experiences ( Ellis et al, 2011 ). It also has the advantage of promoting personal well-being ( Ellis, 2013 ) through recounting personal experiences ( Lapadat, 2017 ) and emotional experiences ( Akehurst and Scott, 2021 ).…”

Hearing Like a Musician: Integrating Sensory Perception of Self into a Social Theory of Self-Reflexivity

“…The three cases discussed in this article are all drawn from interviews and observations with classical musicians that were part of the larger study. Other pedagogical strategies are described elsewhere (Maslen 2015; Maslen 2019; Maslen 2020). All names are pseudonyms.…”