Becoming interested—the evolvement of research interest in case study research on sports

Åsa Andersson,Peter Korp,Anne B Reinertsen

doi:10.1177/14687941211061053

Åsa Andersson, Peter Korp + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941211061053

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Abstract

This article challenge research political assumptions of research interests as context specific phenomena predefined by researchers and others in case study research on sports. By adopting a Deleuzian perspective of materiality, the aim is to overturn academic power dimensions as well as anthropocentric focuses and instead explore how research interests emerge in case-assemblages. This is a radical shift that re-theorizes the production of research interests as co-produced capacities in researching bodies. The analysis is done by mapping territorializing, deterritorializing, and reterritorializing affects as well as molar and molecular affects. We use these affects to explore how our research interest evolved in a case study on a swimming event. We conclude by extending this critical exploration to the production of research interests in general and the exaggerated belief that research interests are attributes of specific human bodies (researchers) that precede studies.

Highlights

In the social sciences of sport, traditional case study methodology is quite common
Thereby, we provide a third, immanent, perspective on case study research that shifts the locus of research interests away from human bodies and individuals toward affective flows within case-assemblages (Andersson et al, 2020)
We suggest in a previous paper (Andersson et al, 2020) that out of respect for the bodies involved, qualitative case study research in the social sciences of sports need to challenge traditional boundaries of knowledge production and transgress what has being normed as constituent of qualitative case study research

Summary

Introduction

In the social sciences of sport, traditional case study methodology is quite common. Often, we conduct case studies as empirical in-depth investigations of context specific phenomena that are of specific interest to ourselves (see, e.g., Barker-Ruchti et al, 2019; Edmonds, 2020; Ketokivi & Choi, 2014; Longhofer et al, 2017; Puddle et al, 2019; cf. Yin, 2009). Starting from a Deleuzian perspective of materiality, we will explore research interests not as vertical predefined phenomena, as linear consequences of academic or extra-academic research preferences, or as related to solid cases, but as becomings in assemblages of multiple human and nonhuman bodies, ideas and social formations that cut across the natural and cultural realms of epistemic and phronetic case studies.

Results

Conclusion