Somewhere Between a Stopwatch and a Recording Device: Ethnographic Reflections From the Pool

IF 1.6 3区社会学 Q2 SOCIOLOGY

Journal of Contemporary Ethnography Pub Date : 2023-09-30 DOI:10.1177/08912416231200642

Gareth McNarry, Jacquelyn Allen-Collinson, Adam B. Evans

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Abstract

As has recently been highlighted, despite the prevalence of methodological “confessional tales” in ethnography generally, the challenges of undertaking ethnographic research specifically in institutional sports settings remain underexplored. Drawing on data from a 3-year ethnographic study of competitive swimming in the United Kingdom (UK), here we explore some of the practical challenges of balancing different elements of the researcher’s role when undertaking ethnographic “insider” research in familiar settings. In particular, we consider the difficulties of balancing the role of a doctoral researcher and the chosen research role of a volunteer coach with a competitive swimming program. Employing the anthropological concept of liminality, we also analyze the lived challenges of leaving a highly familiar field and entering a state of liminality, where the researcher was caught on the threshold betwixt and between a return to full-time employment in the former “known” role of coach, and a move forward to embrace a new “unknown” role as a full-time member of academic staff.

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介于秒表和记录设备之间:游泳池的民族志反射

正如最近所强调的那样，尽管在民族志中普遍存在方法论上的“自白故事”，但在机构体育环境中进行民族志研究的挑战仍未得到充分探索。根据英国一项为期3年的竞技游泳民族志研究的数据，我们在这里探讨了在熟悉的环境中进行民族志“内幕”研究时，平衡研究人员角色的不同元素的一些实际挑战。特别是，我们考虑平衡博士研究员的角色和志愿者教练与竞技游泳项目的选择研究角色的困难。运用人类学的阈限概念，我们还分析了离开一个高度熟悉的领域并进入阈限状态的生活挑战，在阈限状态下，研究人员被困在回归以前“已知”教练角色的全职工作和作为全职学术人员接受新的“未知”角色之间的门槛上。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Journal of Contemporary Ethnography Multiple-

CiteScore

3.20

自引率

6.20%

发文量

期刊介绍： The Journal of Contemporary Ethnography publishes in-depth investigations of diverse people interacting in their natural environments to produce and communicate meaning. At its best, ethnography captures the strange in the familiar and the familiar in the strange. JCE is committed to pushing the boundaries of ethnographic discovery by building upon its 30+ year tradition of top notch scholarship.