Hanging up the shirt: an autoethnographic account of disengaging from a social rugby culture

Abstract

Violent practices are a common feature of homosocial sporting environments. The objective of the current paper is to explore how one individual disengaged from a sporting community characterized by such practices. An autoethnographic approach involving recollection and interactional exchanges is used to create a realist narrative account which offers insight into the process of disengagement. The narrative focuses on the: (1) ongoing nature of cultural participation; (2) agency and the restriction of ways of being in sports teams and (3) the durable nature of personal characteristics that are learned in sporting environments. These issues are discussed in light of cultural learning theory and specifically, the analytic concept, ‘becoming’. The paper concludes with methodological reflections and a consideration of directions for future research.