Exercise as Transnational Solidarity with Palestine: Politics, Bodies, and Movement

Application summary

Sports and politics are inseparable - sport has been recognised both as a vehicle for social justice and as a site where oppressive structures are (re)produced. Currently, these dynamics manifest strongly in relation to Palestine, as acts and expressions of solidarity are increasing: athletes and activists capture public space to raise awareness and solidarity, critique complicity, call for boycotts and sanctions, and disrupt events. In my previous research on the Right to Movement (RTM) community in Bethlehem, Palestine, I unravelled the potential role that exercise communities hold in promoting social justice and collective responsibility. This complementary project shifts focus to how informal, transnational exercise communities organise and act in relation to the Palestinian cause. Specifically, the project seeks to critically examine how such communities articulate their political claims and express solidarity through embodied practices, mobility, collective organisation, and how Palestinian counterparts engage with and relate to such efforts. Grounded in feminist decolonial understandings of peace as relational, lived, experienced and practised in everyday life, this project seeks to unravel the ways in which informal exercise communities operate as sites for knowledge generation whereby politics infuse in bodies, embodiment and bodily movement. Data for this research will be collected through multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in Palestine, Ireland, Norway and Finland. By centring the solidarity work of informal exercise communities, this project bridges the relations between sports, politics, and the movement of collective bodies. Informed by feminist decolonial peace research, the project seeks to unravel how transnational solidarity is enacted through embodied, everyday practices. It moves beyond formal sport to highlight how mobility and exercise serve as sites of political engagement, knowledge production, and relational peace-making.