Post-qualitative inquiry and the new materialist turn: implications for sport, health and physical culture research

Abstract

In this article I examine the 'turn to' post-qualitative inquiry, new materialism and posthumanist theories to consider the challenges of, and implications for, doing research in sport, health and physical culture. The term 'post-qualitative inquiry' (PQI) indicates a decisive departure from the ethico-onto-epistemological assumptions that have informed the humanist interpretive tradition of qualitative research (St Pierre 2011). Moving beyond a theory/method divide, PQI draws its methodological inspiration from critical post-humanist debates concerned with how 'matter' is thought and constituted through entanglements of human and non-human bodies, affects, objects and practices. Such a shift reorients thinking around relational questions about the material-discursive forces coimplicated in what bodies can 'do' and how matter 'acts', rather than a concern with what 'is' a body or the agentic meaning of experience. I discuss how these new styles of thought reorient our ontoepistemological assumptions and theory-method approaches through engagement with PQI within (and beyond) sport, health and physical culture scholarship.

Reimagining health and fitness materials: an affective inquiry into collaging

“…Levy, Halse and Wright (2016) explained that a re-thinking and re-searching of their methodological and epistemological orientations produced "different ways in which doors opened and closed" (p. 185). Taking a cue from them, along with arguments for post-humanist material processes in physical culture research (Fullagar, 2017;Markula, 2019), affect provided an opening. Coding and categorizing did not 'fit' with the creative process of scrapbooking and magazine re-assemblages 2 produced by the young participants.…”

“…The material aesthetic collage process enabled affective capacities for me to seethink-feel differently. Touching, pulling apart, gluing, re-configuring materials from the participants brought conversations (and voices) to the forefront, especially as I re-played these alongside debates in health, fitness and physical culture (Fullagar, 2017;Markula, 2019;Thorpe & Marfell, 2019). For example, the yellow pop-up notes (question marks, exclamation points) Sara attached to her reassemblage did not just act as a critique of the things encountered and 'popular' messages received through health and fitness magazines.…”

“…In addition to critiquing normative societal assumptions of the physical body ('I don't like that we associate being healthy with being skinny'), Sara's re-assemblage questioned the starting point for such normative assumptions around body size, shape and weight ('I don't get the whole concept of plus size'). Moreover, as other bodies became entwined in the collage, the inquiry propelled further questions into which (and whose) bodies 'matter' in a society that perpetuates links between obesity policy, fitness, culture and economics (Fullagar, 2017). One point of the collage began to depict a cluster of materials related to money, obesity, slimness, and nutrition.…”

“…This privileging may be more problematic as the current educational and political climate (in the U.S.) prioritizes corporatization, individualism and privatization (Strom & Martin, 2017), which further marginalize (and assault) Black/Latinx bodies (Dernikos et al, 2019). With physical culture (through PE, sports, media, after-school programming) inevitably tied to sociopolitical issues (Fullagar, 2017) and scholarship embedded in commercial networks of connection (Gard & Pluim, 2017), I can't help but emphasize ways to do research and educational practices differently. In this, my turn to affect and experiment into collaging…”

“…This emphasis on outcomes over process, however, problematically narrows research agendas and pedagogical practices (Gard & Pluim, 2017). I draw from others (Fitzpatrick, 2018;Fullagar, 2017) whom acknowledge the importance of critical work to challenge normativity and mobilize different perspectives in PE and physical culture. As such, the 'experiment' (paper) and collage offers no 'final' answers.…”