(Re)presenting equestrian histories—storytelling as a method of inquiry

Abstract

Responding to calls about the need to ‘give voice’ to groups previously marginalized in research and to challenge meta-narratives about men in sports this paper explores the use of a narrative approach to illuminate men's experiences—and the doing of gender—within equestrian sports, a sport dominated by women in Sweden. Adopting the position of a storyteller three literary short-stories were constructed from interviews with men active in equestrianism. (Re)presenting research findings in this way evoke a lot of questions in academic circles. We have often been asked how the stories were constructed and how one judges whether they are representative and trustworthy. These are legitimate questions, no doubt. But questions that are of importance to all qualitative research. It is as if the writing of stories is some kind of mysterious abracadabra activity and not a deliberate and theoretically informed creative process. While reading critique of narrative ways to (re)present research findings, where some researchers suggest that narrative inquiry is a retreat from the difficult academic work of generating new and important ideas, our assumption is that it stems from this misunderstanding about story writing. And maybe the construction of stories has not been given enough attention in narrative research. The purpose of this article is therefore to illustrate the difficult but inspiring activity of transforming 19 interviews into literary short-stories and to highlight methodological concerns relating to presenting these stories. We also demonstrate that creative analytical writing is not just a way of presenting research findings but also a method of inquiry.