From the ground to the clouds: Minimalist and maximalist footwear in the sport of running

Abstract

Abstract Exploring the sport of running from a media ecology perspective, this article analyses minimalist and maximalist running shoe technologies. As extensions of the human body, minimalist and maximalist footwear afford different material, perceptual and aesthetic experiences of running: maximalist shoes push runners’ feet up to the clouds and minimalist shoes pull them down to the ground. In running culture, these affordances are rhetorically articulated through discourses of minimalism and maximalism, which contrastingly construe how footwear technologies mediate relations between human bodies and natural environments.