Playing as if: an ethnographic study of Nepali trail runners

Abstract

What drives dedicated Nepali trail runners? Why do so many hope for elite status in their sport despite systemic obstacles which mean that most will not succeed? Based on fifteen months of participant-observation fieldwork and thirty interviews with trail runners, this dissertation presents an account of the pursuit of the good life through trail running as a relation of ‘cruel
optimism’ (Berlant 2011). The primary subjects of my research were the subset of those runners I met and interviewed whom I call ‘dedicated trail runners’—Nepalis who sought podium positions in mountain trail races and aspired to careers as professional athletes. The majority of these runners were from rural, hill backgrounds and janajati (Tibeto-Burman) ethnic groups and were now based in Kathmandu. Dedicated trail runners cathected the sport with their dreams of the good life. This relation provided runners with a sense of purpose, agency and identity. Nonetheless, the relation was damaging in that the object of their attachment was largely chimerical, since the stubborn realities of political economy prevented most of them from achieving sustainable livelihoods through trail running. Most dedicated Nepali trail runners were aware of and vocal about the constraints which made realising their dreams so unlikely; this dissertation asks how their optimistic relation to the sport as a means of attaining social and economic empowerment was sustained in the face of this reality. I suggests that the affects experienced in the physical acts of trail running were hitched to the narrative of becoming an elite trail runner, thus reinforcing the salience of this story in their lives. The pleasures and excitements of trail running sustained runners’ attachment to the narrative of achieving the good life through hard work despite their recognition of the low likelihood of their success. In this way, my dissertation is an account of motivation beyond rational calculation in which people’s orientations to the future are sustained by intense affective forces—in this case, those forces awakened in pleasurable and exciting experiences of mountain trail running.