Running bodies: urban becomings and continuums from a feminist ethnographic approach

Abstract

The objective of this article is to activate a gaze of continuity between human bodies, urban environments and digital technologies, through a practical example based on an ethnographic research work with runners in Querétaro (Mexico) and Barcelona (Spain). We are interested in showing how the body that runs becomes materiality and discourse in relation to other materialities (urban and digital), and how it relates, modifies, assembles, performs, fuses, responds and corresponds to the urban environment, giving rise to materialities and discourses in and through the practice of running. In the same way, we want to show how the environment and technologies are transformed in and by the movement and action of bodies. According to our research, the body in movement emerges as an experience of continuity through dimensions such as sociability, virtuality and knowledge, becoming a vehicle for political action in the urban space, negotiating physical borders and social representations. To incorporate this relational perspective among bodies, spaces and digital technologies in the social analysis of everyday life, allows for more complex reflections on corporality and possibly rethink public policy-making in areas of urbanism and environmentalism from a critical and intersectional approach.