Place, Ecological Dynamics and Football

In this review article, I will use the phenomenology of place and read it alongside ecological dynamics theories (EDT) in sport. I will show the many congruences between these two areas of research and use place to support, supplement and show the phenomenological and ontological foundations of ecological dynamics analysis in sports. I show that the findings and principles used in ecological dynamics can be better understood through the work of Australian place phenomenologist Jeff Malpas. Through this relationship between phenomenological philosophy and ecological dynamics theory, I hope to establish a stronger connection between these two diverging fields of research (phenomenological ontology and sport science). Throughout this article, I demonstrate that an understanding of place can provide a widened and phenomenological basis for the understanding of EDT of sport including affordances, constraints, expertise and learning. Specifically, I use the first-person perspective of the phenomenology of place to illustrate a perspective that ecological dynamics theories do not have access due to the nature of their method. As a result, this article augments both the philosophy of place and ecological dynamics theories of sport by orientating them to different views on the same phenomena. Place benefits by being practically applied to sport sciences whereas ecological dynamics benefits by unveiling a new phenomenological perspective, description and ontological grounding to their object of study.