Contemporary meanings of endurance

This book critically analyses the concept of endurance from different theoretical, conceptual, methodological, and empirical perspectives.

The first part of the book takes a closer look at endurance, by examining how it relates to concepts such as resilience, perseverance, and perdurance. By analysing how these concepts overlap but differ, we reach a better understanding of what constitutes endurance. Furthermore, endurance is reconfigured as a as a mundane aspect of everyday life. The latter part of the book focuses on embodied experiences of endurance, more specifically on endurance running, walking, and (physical) performances. The different contributions focus on the meanings, values, and attributes that people ascribe to endurance in various socio-cultural contexts. The book uncovers practices, environments, and discourses in which endurance is applied and manifested, from drought-affected communities in rural Australia to professional endurance runners in Ethiopia as well as migrants in Greece and performance acts in domestic spaces in the United Kingdom and beyond.

This book will be of interest to scholars of movement sciences, sports studies, mobilities, leisure studies, and resilience studies.

Noel B. Salazar is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at KU Leuven, Belgium.

Jeroen Scheerder is Professor of Sport Sociology at KU Leuven, Belgium.