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

Robert C Townsend,Christopher J Cushion

doi:10.1177/1468794120931349

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

Robert C Townsend, Christopher J Cushion

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794120931349

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Abstract

Reflexivity is continually called for as a marker of quality ethnographic research. In this paper we put reflexivity to ‘work’, providing a critical commentary on data generated through ethnographic fieldwork in high-performance disability sport. Drawing on Bourdieu’s reflexive sociology, we situate the ethnographer in the field of disability sport, turning a reflexive lens onto the practices that are associated with occupying the role of coach and researcher simultaneously. We illustrate the centrality of researcher subjectivity – through the reflexive device of ‘crossing fields’ – as a productive resource for examining the social and intellectual unconscious embedded in the process of doing ethnographic research. In so doing, we provide a unique example of how reflexive practice can offer a rigorous, power-conscious reading of an ethnography of high-performance coaching in disability sport.

Highlights

Reflexivity is firmly embedded within the language of social science and is well-established as a critical component of qualitative research
It might be reasonably argued that despite ongoing recourse to reflexive practice reflexivity constitutes a taken-for-granted or uncritically-accepted term (Maton, 2003) in which to be reflexive is taken as a proxy for individualistic self-reflexivity, either through autoethnographic or confessional tales (Van Maanen 1988; Sparkes, 2002)
Recent research has illustrated that the pedagogic function of coaching reproduces rather than redistributes unequal social relations, imposing ‘athlete-first’ discourses based on highly-regulated principles of performance, self-government, achievement, challenge and independence, to construct a disabled athlete subject (Author A, B and others, 2018). This highperformance sport value system refracts deeper value judgements based on ableism. It is in these complexities and contradictions that frame disability research that this study sits

Summary

Introduction

Reflexivity is firmly embedded within the language of social science and is well-established as a critical component of qualitative research. It might be reasonably argued that despite ongoing recourse to reflexive practice reflexivity constitutes a taken-for-granted or uncritically-accepted term (Maton, 2003) in which to be reflexive is taken as a proxy for individualistic self-reflexivity, either through autoethnographic or confessional tales (Van Maanen 1988; Sparkes, 2002) This refers to the ways in which the researcher writes themselves and their backgrounds into the text or analysis in order to demonstrate how their social history and identity influence their interpretations (e.g. Berger, 2015). Bourdieu’s reflexive practice might be understood as both methodological and theoretical; recognising how engaging in research shapes, and is shaped by, the situated aspects of the researchers’ social selves and the “invisible determinations” inherent in the scholarly gaze (Wacquant, 1989: 34) Such is the strength and value of reflexivity that it is routinely called for in ethnographic research broadly (Alvesson and Skoldberg, 2009; Van Maanen, 1988). It is in these complexities and contradictions that frame disability research that this study sits

Crossing Fields

Aims and Purpose

Fieldwork context

Implications and lessons learned