Creative Analytic Practices: Onto-episto-theoretical Attachments, Uses, and Constructions within Humanist Qualitative Leisure Research

Abstract

In a field where there is so much diversity around content, purpose, and topic, it is of utmost importance that we continue to support multiple ways of predicting, understanding, critiquing, and deconstructing leisure phenomena in our research. This manuscript, therefore, is not attempting to make a generalizable statement about how inquiry must or should be. Instead, it simply calls for the understanding and appreciation across paradigms of more creative forms of inquiry, particularly those using creative analytic practices within qualitative inquiry. In this sense, this discussion challenges all researchers to consider the ways in which creative approaches to research might be meaningful for leisure studies research, academia, and beyond, without claiming that it is always the most useful approach. this manuscript will specifically explore creative analytic practices (CAP)1-the use of creative genres such as fiction, poetry, and screenplay for data representation, with focus on their philosophical rationale, advantages, use, design, and evaluation.