Paper short abstract:

Increasing numbers of unemployed young men are turning to long distance running as a way to ‘change their lives.’ This paper explores how they experience time, and how they reclassify seemingly ‘dead’ time' to make it meaningful and productive. I go on to discuss how running reshapes the category of ‘youth.’

Paper long abstract:

This paper will discuss how, in spite of the exhausting and precarious nature of the sport, increasing numbers of young men are trying to become long-distance runners in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In a context of widespread youth unemployment, and the dismantling of modernist expectations for employment and education, I explore running as a way of placing one's life within a hopeful narrative. Focusing on the temporal disjunctures resulting from unemployment, and grounded in fifteen months of ethnographic research in Addis Ababa, my paper engages with the works of Mains (2007), Chua (2014) and Weiss (2004) to argue that for young men who would otherwise be considered unemployed, running is a way of reclassifying what would have been considered 'dead' time as productive and meaningful. Rather than merely 'doing time-pass' after training sessions, runners place importance on the productive potential of 'rest'. I also discuss the practice of periodically applying for new passports as a way in which runners actively reset their youth in a context in which 'youth transition' (Chua, 2014) has become increasingly difficult. Given that most young runners move from rural areas to the city, I go on to discuss the ways in which 'working' as a runner alters the ways in which people socialise, and how the logic of competition works to foster a sense of individualism in place of the more communal approach to training and eating experienced in rural training centres.