Beyond Boundaries: The Development and Potential of Ethnography in the Study of Sport and Physical Culture

Abstract

Ethnographic approaches to the study of sport and physical culture have developed primarily within physical education and kinesiology programs and are typically framed in dialogue with sociological theorizing of agency, structure, power, and inequality. Beginning with reference to anthropology and sociology, we review the emergence, development, and subsequent transdisciplinary travels of ethnographic study of sport and physical culture. In doing so, we underscore the importance of theory, context, and disciplinary tradition in the development of sporting ethnographies. We then critically outline the place of ethnography in physical cultural studies (PCS). Rather than exhuming existing debates about the originality and uniqueness of the PCS enterprise, we highlight the need to decenter the hyper-reflexive researcher and advocate for the consideration of pleasure in ethnographic studies to achieve the interventionist goals PCS protagonists set themselves.

The Shared Sociological Imagination: A Reflexive Tale from the Boxe Popolare Field

“…This idea resonates with the perspective of physical cultural studies PCS. According to Gibson and Atkinson [18] (p. 446), "the reflexive intent of PCS ethnographies means [. .…”

“…. based on] one's corporeal involvement in the field" [18] (p. 637). Section 5 is devoted to final remarks.…”

‘Put that in your fucking research’: reflexivity, ethnography and disability sport coaching

“…Increased critical scrutiny on the impacts of situating disabilities within high-performance coaching cultures is particularly valuable for understanding disability sport as a site for resisting and reproducing disability. However, these reflections on conducting research in disability sport coaching should be seen not as confessions or ‘hand-wringing’ (Gibson and Atkinson, 2018; Pillow, 2003), but an attempt to decentre the analyst in relation to the field itself. The ‘method’ of crossing fields highlighted how a socially instituted position as a researcher placed ‘outside of the urgency of a practical situation’ (Bourdieu, 1990b: 381) enabled critical reflection on the hidden mechanisms and ideologies functioning within the coaching process that appeared common sense and natural.…”

“…However, this ‘ethnocentric’ position is not without its criticisms (see Wacquant, 1989; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). Indeed, such approaches have been dismissed as a ‘self-indulgent discussion about ethnographers between ethnographers’ (Gibson and Atkinson, 2018: 446; Wacquant, 1989) that, at worst, provides a platform for tedious, benign and unrevealing description (Lynch, 2000). Such research risks consigning ethnography to cultural relativism or regressive self-analysis, thus bringing the ethnographic enterprise to ‘a grinding halt’ and leading to the rather disheartening conclusion that ‘all is in the final analysis nothing but discourse’ (Bourdieu, 2003: 282).…”

Inside the black box: A micro-sociological analysis of sport for development

“…Ethnography encourages researchers to immerse themselves bodily and intersubjectively in the SfD processes they are studying, from the perspective that in order to understand interaction rituals, you have to observe your own body participating in them. As Gibson and Atkinson (2018: 447) argue, 'it demands copresence (thinking, feeling, interacting, working beside, pursuing intersubjectivity) with them [research subjects] in the practice of everyday life. '…”