Michael Crawley

We’ve not started ours yet but I’d like to try a two guest format… No doubt we’ll discover why people don’t do it more often in due course 😂

Congratulations to all of our brilliant authors for being shortlisted for The Charles Tyrwhitt Sports Book Awards 2025! @sportsbookawards.bsky.social

@iaincartergolf.bsky.social @lauralaker.bsky.social @maddyorr.bsky.social @mphcrawley.bsky.social

Durham Anthropology would like to invite you to this years Layton Dialogue!

This year’s theme is ‘Multispecies ethnography as a forum for dialogue in anthropology’ and will feature Prof Marianne Lien and Dr Kerry Dore with Dr Simona Capisani as discussant! 📚🎓

Finally, I argue that it may be less the case that we can't 'put our understanding into words' as Bourdieu puts it, but more that some moral practices are supposed to be unspoken.

Synchronicity in training was seen as key to success. 'If the cobweb strings unite they can bind a lion' our coach said. But it was seen as requiring a lot of hard work to maintain in practice.

Being able to seamlessly follow in the footsteps of another, or to take over from them if they are faltering, is cultivated as an automatic response to be reproduced without conscious thought. As the sub-agent of our group put it, ‘If there is trust there is no need for words.’

Bourdieu wrote about skills being passed on 'through silent and practical communication from body to body'. I argue that affective dispositions like trust can also be passed on / cultivated in this way, and that synchronous drills are part of achieving this.

Training together in close proximity was understood to require a level of trust that was difficult to sustain. Therefore, training practices are deliberate 'trust work' designed to allow people to embody trust without thinking.

New paper out in Africa, alongside some other great writing on trust and competition in Africa. I explore the paradox that whilst Ethiopian runners often say 'there is no trust' between athletes, they embody trusting relations by training together. A short thread:

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

This looks like a fascinating PhD project for someone:

EDR #37: On doing running ethnography in Ethiopia and how to think better about East African running cultures - interview with Michael Crawley Everyday Runners · Episode

Enjoyed recording this for the Everyday Runners podcast with Andy Fuller, who asked some really great questions:

open.spotify.com/episode/7xHb...

Mark Cavendish says 'I wouldn't make it as a professional now' Mark Cavendish says that he would be unlikely to be a professional cyclist if he was starting his career now.

Cavendish wouldn't have made it as a pro rider today because he didn't 'hit the numbers.'

Reminds me of what Tao Geoghegan Hart told me:

'Our emotions and our experiences as humans - we aren't robots - actually determine far more of our performance than anything else'

shorturl.at/chbr3