by Marianna Melenteva 

How can sports change lives of children and youth? One could easily assume that the question is somewhat elementary. However, in Norway, sports aren’t just about competition or entertainment. While politics play sports into a social platform addressing inequality and promoting social inclusion, this does not tell us all that much about how children and youth experience sports as an arena where they can join in the interpretation of belonging and exclusion (Broch, 2023). To get at this process, I lean on recent studies that focus how sports can be experienced as transformative. Thie transformative potential I am studying, is one that enhances bonds between athletes and that, in its turn, fosters a sense of belonging that can be carried into non-sporting contexts.

Belonging as a social and sensual experience

On this blog, Alison J. Pugh (2023) presents the view that belonging, while being an individual emotional condition, is shaped by powerful societal forces. Pugh refers to the reciprocal process of acknowledging each other as ‘connective labor’. She urges schools, neighborhoods, and other institutions to foster ‘connective cultures’. This idea resonates with Vanessa May’s (2023) view in this blog that belonging is a deeply social experience. For it to be effective, it must be acknowledged by others in the group. Further, May discusses how belonging is not just about being connected to different individuals, but also to places and things. Belonging has many layers to it. She talks among other things about ‘material belonging’, which is about feeling connected to the physical aspects of our surroundings, like the landscapes we live in, the objects we use, or even tastes and smells. According to May, belonging goes beyond just a mental state; it’s something we experience through our senses and is, among other aspects, an embodied experience. My own studies on children and youth sports echo this idea. I’ve found that creating a sense of belonging by sharing and sensuously experiencing a place can enhance group cohesion (Melenteva, forthcoming, 2024).

Sensing emplacement and cohesion

For a cultural sociologist, interested in how culture shapes society and in meaning-making interactions between people within cultures, belonging is a bonding power, a prerequisite of solidarity and incorporation, also in sports cultures. Besides, as a sensory ethnographer, I seek to comprehend personal embodied and emplaced experiences of belonging in young athletes. In addressing this issue, I treat emplacement in the Geertzian (1973) manner making it discernable through how the sense of belonging is represented in young athletes’ actions and other material forms. This includes observing their sensory experiences and juxtaposing them with my own perceptions of the same environment. In this way, I “imaginatively empathize” with the actions and sensory experiences of the emplaced participants (Pink, 2011b, 270).

My present research demonstrates that being emplaced and sharing sensory experiences, young athletes may sense group cohesion and experience belonging via senses and as an embodied experience (cf. May, 2023). For instance, consider young athletes on a basketball court or in a swimming pool. As they experience the rhythmic (or non-rhythmic) bouncing of the ball on the basketball court, or the distinctive, pervasive warmth of chlorine-filled swimming pool waters, they may start to develop a deeper sense of connection (cf. May’s ‘connective labour’). This isn’t just a physical connection to the place, but also an emotional bond with their peers. The repetitive thud of the basketball or the unique warmth of the pool becomes synonymous with a sense of belonging, group unity, and a shared vibrancy. It’s in these sensory experiences that they find comfort, expressing a profound ease in the places they inhabit.

Taking May’s understanding of belonging as a point of departure, I adjust it to my present research by defining it as a deeply personal experience and a sense of ease with oneself and with the environment of the place one resides. 

My research indicates that the sense of belonging among young athletes is not static but evolves and fluctuates as they participate in organized sports. In some cases, this fluctuation may even lead to withdrawal. These athletes often begin as inexperienced novices attending drop-in training sessions. Over time, they start to establish a sense of belonging that’s intricately linked to the sensory experience of the shared performance space and the resulting group cohesion. I propose that these young athletes experience personal transformation that is both embodied and emotional, fostered through multisensory experiences of inclusion (or exclusion) within their group.

Multisensory experiences of belonging

Sarah Pink (2009) observes that understanding our interactions with others requires an awareness of the sensory experiences that define these encounters. This concept implies that in any social interaction, such as those between research participants or between a researcher and participants, knowledge is shared through sensory, embodied, and emplaced experiences.

However, Pink makes it clear that we cannot assume that knowledge, when shared at the same event by participants and a researcher, is perceived or understood in the same way. Consider, for instance, watching a basketball practice where children are in constant motion, their activity creating a persistent sound of balls rebounding off the floor. This scenario conjured an image of a bee-hive in my mind. However, for those participating in the training, it felt more akin to being part of an ant colony. Indeed, another individual might have perceived themselves as a single particle within a cloud. Pink further explains that by becoming aware of the sensory and physical aspects of other people’s experiences, we cannot directly access or share their personal memories, collective experiences, or imaginations.

In this context, a reflective researcher may rely on their own sensory imagination, rather than just cognitive understanding. According to Pink, by aligning our bodily sensations, rhythms, tastes, and perspectives with those of the participants, we begin to create spaces that are similar to theirs, leading us to feel that we are similarly situated.

By combining Pink’s sensory ethnographic method (Pink, 2009, 2011) with cultural sociological research on sports, I underscore the power of emplacement and shared sensory experiences in fostering group cohesion and promoting collective performance in children and youth sports (Melenteva, 2024, forthcoming). As stated by one of the youthful participants in the project, «When I jut pass through the door of the swimming pool, the mere scent of chlorine instantly triggers a desire within me to join my group in the water and have a proper fun.» Through ethnographic studies on local children and youth sports in Norway, I experienced, just like May argues, that sensory experiences ease and facilitate group interactions and, consequently, solidify group cohesion in ways that can alter incorporation dynamics.

[1] , including those by Broch (2020, 2022, 2023), DeLand (2018, 2022), Corte (2022), and Fine G.A. & Corte. U (2017)

Bio

Marianna Melenteva is a PhD candidate at the Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences. Her research is a cultural analysis of (ex)inclusive practices of local organized children’s and youth sports in the light of cultural sociology of performance. Her research interests include the self and identity formation, belonging, group cohesion and incorporation, multiculturalism, sensory ethnography and sociology of feelings.

References

Broch TB (2020) A Performative Feel for the Game: How Meaningful Sports Shape Gender, Bodies and Social Action. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Broch TB (2022) Performative feelings for others: the civil repair of organized competitive sports. Cultural Sociology 17(1): 79–95.

Broch, T. B. (2023). Ritual pathways and dramaturgical efforts: Negotiating the meaning of organized play in Norwegian children’s sports. Acta Sociologica, 00016993231201483.

Corte, U.  (2022) Dangerous Fun: The Social Lives of Big Wave Surfers. University of Chicago Press

DeLand MF (2018) The ocean run: Stage, cast, and performance in a public park basketball scene. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 47(1): 28–59.

DeLand MF (2022) A sociology of the “and one!”: The culture of charisma in pickup basketball. American Journal of Cultural Sociology 10(4): 676–703.

Fine GA & Corte U (2017) Group pleasures: collaborative commitments, shared narrative, and the sociology of fun. Sociological Theory 35(1): 64–86.

Geertz C (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.

Helsedirektoratet (2010) Sosial kapital – teorier og perspektiver. Oslo

Helsedirektoratet (2018) Folkehelsepolitisk rapport 2017.Oslo

May, V. (2023) What is belonging and why is it important? Blog,  (What is belonging and why is it important? – BELONG (oslomet.no)

Melenteva (2024) Sensing cohesion: shared sensory experiences in organized youth sports. Forthcoming. Presented at summer seminar of the research group BUOS (Barn og unges oppvekst og sosialisering), Inland University of the applied science Norway, May 2024 and at research summer school at Roskilde, Danmark, August 2024

Pink, S. (2009) Doing sensory ethnography. Los Angeles: Sage

Pink, S. (2011a). From embodiment to emplacement: Re-thinking competing bodies, senses and spatialities. Sport, education and society, 16(3), 343-355.

Pink (2011b) Multimodality, multisensoriality and ethnographic knowing: social semiotics and the phenomenology of perception. Qualitative Research, 11 (3) , 261-276

Pugh A. (2023) On Belonging, Sameness and Difference, blog, On Belonging, Sameness and Difference – BELONG (oslomet.no)