title: Fell runners and walking walls: towards a sociology of living landscapes and aesthetic atmospheres as an alternative to a Lakeland picturesque.
abstract: This article draws on analysis of data generated by way of an ethnography of fell running in the English Lake District and suggests that participants who have lived and run in the area for many years experience a particular mode of aesthetic. The Lake District has long been valued for its outstanding scenery represented in the aesthetic of the picturesque comprising relatively static landscapes that should be conserved. Established fell runners who have run in the area for many decades apprehend and appreciate the landscape in more complex, rooted and situated ways. The anthropologist Ingold, distinguishes between landscape and landsceppan, and this insight is instructive for grasping the way in which the runners do not simply scope scenery but work with the land: they shape it and are shaped by it. Fell runners are elements within the living environment and along with walls, sheep, becks, sun, rain--what Ingold evocatively calls the 'weather-world'--are mobile. Movement is central to their aesthetic, they enjoy not so much the scenic but rather a fellsceppan and do so through their fast eye-gait-footwork and their lively, variable occupation with the terrain. The fells infiltrate and interpenetrate the runners and movement through the fells generates a somatic aesthetic. The pleasure in turn breeds existential capital an embodied gratification that serves as an attractor that binds those who appreciate feelings of being alive with and in the fells.
authors.affiliation: Department of Sociology, University of York.
authors.forename: Sarah
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nettleton
mesh_terms: D000884:Anthropology, Cultural; D004739:England; D004777:Environment; D004954:Esthetics; D006801:Humans; D066269:Social Theory; D012961:Sociology
keywords: Existential capital; Lake District; atmosphere; embodiment; landscape; running