‘If there is trust there is no need for words’: embodying trust in a competitive environment

Abstract

The anthropology of sport literature, and literature on neoliberalism in Africa more broadly, has often been predicated on the notion that neoliberalism forces a conversion from seeing the self as collectively produced towards the development of an individualistic and competitive ‘entrepreneurship of self’. While global long-distance running is increasingly competitive, with the odds against success stacked ever higher, this is not a dynamic that can be traced in Ethiopia. Rather, there is a sense that the individualism and competitiveness that are acknowledged to already be at the heart of Amhara society must be tempered in order for athletes to survive within this system. Increasing competition is understood to require people to work together more closely, rather than forcing them apart. In this article, I explore the paradox that bodily acts of trust can coexist with the discursive insistence on the impossibility of trust in competitive environments. By focusing on the warm-up as a key site of trust work, I show how an awareness of the challenges inherent in enacting trusting relations in close proximity with others necessitates deliberate work over a number of years to render such behaviour as unspoken as possible.