Body Ecology and Emersive Leisure

The emerging field of body ecology offers fresh insights into how the body engages with its surrounding environment through consciousness, perception, knowledge and emotion. In this groundbreaking collection, leading scholars of sport, leisure and philosophy draw on research on topics as diverse as surfing, freediving, slacklining, parkour, bodybuilding, dance and circus arts to flesh out the concept of body ecology and its potential for helping us understand our connection with the world around us.

Touching on theories of subjectivity, embodiment, pleasure and play, this book explores different approaches to studying body ecology as a way of conceptualising the experience of being immersed in nature, in the elements and in one’s own body through the power of awareness. An experience becomes emersive when it involves the production of new emotions in the body: emersion is the activation of what is living within the body itself.

Shedding new light on the possibilities of physical cultural studies, Body Ecology and Emersive Leisure is fascinating reading for all students and scholars with an interest in sport, leisure, philosophy and the body.

Bernard Andrieu is Professor of Philosophy and Epistemology of the Body at the University Paris-Descartes, France. He is Director of "Body Technics"; Coordinator of "Body Ecology in Adapted, Physical Sport Activities"; and Co-Editor of Corps, a review published by CNRS. His main interests are in Body Ecology, Emersiology, Self Health, Sport Ethics, Somatechny, and the History of Somaticians

Jim Parry is former Head of Philosophy and of the School of Humanities, University of Leeds, UK. He is now Visiting Professor at the Faculty of PE and Sport, Charles University, Prague. His main interests are in applied ethics (especially sports ethics) and social and political philosophy. He is co-editor of the Routledge series Ethics and Sport

Alessandro Porrovecchio is Assistant Lecturer in Sociology of Sport at the University of Lille II, France. His main interests are in interdisciplinary sociology-based research on sports and health. He is Vice-Coordinator of the European Sociological Association

Olivier Sirost is a Professor at the Universite de Rouen Normandie, France, and Head of the CETAPS Laboratory. His main interests are in the study of the senses and outdoor leisure. He is the author of La vie au grand air; and with Bernard Andrieu the Editor of L’ecologie corporelle