The three worlds of the minimalist runner: enactive analysis of a transition to barefoot running

Minimalist rhetoric frames barefoot running as an immediate and unambiguous return to nature, made possible by the cosmic sensory experience felt by the practitioners. However, research has yet to specifically document the transformative dynamics of the relationship between runners undergoing a minimalist transition and their environment. Adopting a dual approach, based on enaction and affordance theories, we follow a ‘collectively framed autoethnographic’ protocol intended to address this gap. We aim to highlight how the range of footwear adopted by the barefoot runner over the course of his minimalist transition contributes to the enaction of three natural ‘microworlds’, three ways of moving through nature, three social identities and imaginaries surrounding barefoot running, and the delimitation of his relationship to his environment. Going against the grain of naturalist ontology, which reifies and essentializes nature, we show that nature does not preexist the actor’s activity or skills; rather, according to the evolution of his possibilities of perception and action, he interacts with varied and variable dimensions of his environment. Moreover, the promised link between minimalist running and the incorporation of ‘eco-centered ethics’ should be relativized: depending on the footwear used and the meaning assigned by the runner, barefoot practice can lead to an ‘anthropocentric’ understanding of nature as an entity to be dominated and domesticated. A nature sport is, therefore, not ‘sustainable’, or ‘cosmic’ per se, but may become so, depending on the meaning assigned to it by the actor and the way it is practiced.