Overcoming the fear: an autoethnographic narrative of running with epilepsy

Through a phenomenological approach, this article explores the identity conflict that arose within a female runner after diagnosis with epilepsy. Utilising a three month autoethnography to track her experiences of returning to running, the first author narrates the effect of epilepsy on her identity formation. Providing a voice that is absent from a research area dominated by statistics, the reader is asked to involve him/herself in the world of this athlete and in turn embrace the use of narratives as a valuable coping mechanism for those with chronic disorders

Jogging not running: A narrative approach to exploring ‘exercise as leisure’ after a life in elite football

As research has shown, former elite athletes often struggle to adapt to aspects of their post-sport lives. This can include the management of their identities, dealing with the uncertainty of their new roles, and negotiating the changes that occur to their bodies. In this paper we discuss an under-reported challenge facing retired athletes: how to manage their ongoing relationship with exercise. To address this issue we adopted a narrative approach, based on the first author’s experiences as a former football player, to provide a socio-cultural reading of the various challenges involved in the transition from exercise as a vocation to a leisure activity. We suggest that these stories demonstrate that in retirement, former athletes’ docility, while seemingly advantageous, can also be a significant obstacle to developing alternative meanings for exercise, including as a potential re-creative or leisure activity that can become meaningful and important in its own right

Grasping the phenomenology of sporting bodies

The last two decades have witnessed a vast expansion in research and writing on the sociology of the body and on issues of embodiment. Indeed, both sociology in general and the sociology of sport specifically have well heeded the long-standing and vociferous calls ‘to bring the body back in’ to social theory. It seems particularly curious therefore that the sociology of sport has to-date addressed this primarily at a certain abstract, theoretical level, with relatively few accounts to be found that are truly grounded in the corporeal realities of the lived sporting body; a ‘carnal sociology’ of sport, to borrow Crossley’s (1995) expression. To portray and understand more fully this kind of embodied perspective, it is argued, demands engaging with the phenomenology of the body, and this article seeks to contribute to a small but growing literature providing this particular form of ‘embodied’ analysis of the body in sport. Here we identify some useful intellectual resources for developing a phenomenology of sporting experience, specifically its sensory elements, and also subsequently examine the potential for its evocative portrayal and effective analysis via different kinds of textual forms. Key words: phenomenology; sociology of the sporting body; embodiment; the sense

Risky bodies, risky spaces, maternal ‘instincts’: swimming and motherhood

Swimming and aquatic activity are fields in which gendered, embodied identities are brought to the fore, and the co-presence of other bodies can have a significant impact upon lived experiences. To date, however, there has been little research on sport and physical cultures that investigates how meanings associated with space impact upon women’s embodied experiences of participating in swimming, specifically in the presence of their young children. Using semi-structured interviews and non-participant observations, this qualitative study employed a Foucauldian-feminist framework to explore self-perceptions and embodied experiences of aquatic activity amongst 20 women, who were swimming with children aged under 4. Results highlight that through ‘felt’ maternal responsibilities, the co-presence of babies’ and children’s bodies shifted women’s intentionality away from the self towards their child. Mothers’ embodied experiences were grounded in perceptions of space-specific ‘maternal instincts’ and focused upon disciplining their children’s bodies in the lived-space of the swimming pool. Key findings cohere around mothers’ felt concerns about hygiene, water temperature and safety, and elements of intercorporeality and ‘somatic empathy’

Ensuring quality in qualitative inquiry: using key concepts as guidelines

The field of qualitative scientific inquiry employs a fast-growing variety of approaches, whose traditions, procedures, and structures vary, depending on the type of study design and methodology (i.e., phenomenological, ethnographic, grounded theory, case study, action research, etc.). With the interpretive approach, researchers do not utilize the same measures of validity used in positivist approaches to scientific inquiry, since there is ... no one standard or accepted structure as one typically finds in quantitative research (Creswell, 2007). With the absence of a single standard, how, then, is it possible for qualitative researchers to know whether or not their study was done with rigor, that it has validity, that it is ready to submit to their peers? The research literature is sprinkled with references to quality in qualitative inquiry, which helps to construe a study's validity. Markula (2008) suggests that we validate our study's findings by assuring readers that it was done in the best possible way. While each research tradition has its own set of criteria for judging quality, we present here general concepts drawn from the literature. We hope this article will provide a framework from which qualitative researchers can judge their work before submitting it to their peers, one which will help ensure that their study was done in the best possible way.“Garantindo qualidade na investigação qualitativa: Usando conceitos-chave como diretrizes.” O campo da investigação científica qualitativa emprega uma variedade de abordagens em rápido crescimento, cujas tradições, procedimentos e estruturas variam, dependendo do tipo de projeto e metodologia de estudo (i.e., fenomenológica, etnográfica, teoria fundamentada, estudo de caso, pesquisa-ação, etc .). Com a abordagem interpretativa, os pesquisadores não utilizam as mesmas medidas de validade utilizadas nas abordagens positivistas para a investigação científica, uma vez que é “... não algo padrão ou estrutura aceita como tipicamente se encontra em pesquisa quantitativa” (Creswell, 2007). Com a ausência de um padrão único, como, então, é possível para os pesquisadores qualitativos saber se seu estudo foi ou não feito com rigor, que tem validade, que está pronto para ser apresentado aos seus pares? A literatura de pesquisa é cheia de referências sobre qualidade em investigação qualitativa, o que ajuda a interpretar a validade do estudo. Markula (2008) sugere que devemos validar os resultados do nosso estudo assegurando aos leitores que foi feito “da melhor maneira possível.” Embora cada tradição de pesquisa tenha seu próprio conjunto de critérios para avaliar a qualidade, apresentaremos aqui os conceitos gerais resgatados da literatura. Esperamos que este artigo proporcione uma base na qual os pesquisadores qualitativos possam julgar o seu trabalho antes de divulgá-lo a seus pares¸ uma base que possa ajudar a garantir que seu estudo foi feito “da melhor maneira possível.”Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)Sao Paulo State Univ Rio Claro, BR-13506900 Rio Claro, SP, BrazilSao Paulo State Univ Rio Claro, BR-13506900 Rio Claro, SP, Brazi

“Good Athletes Have Fun”: a Foucauldian reading of university coaches’ uses of fun

Fun is deeply ingrained in the ways we talk about and understand sport: Having fun is what makes sport positive and healthy. Drawing on a Foucauldian perspective, we problematize how fun, a psychological construct, informs coaches’ practices. Interviews with 10 varsity coaches from a Canadian university indicated that the coaches used fun to overcome the ‘grind’ of physical skill training. In addition, fun was used to develop and naturalize a need for athletes’ positive psychological traits and skills. In their training contexts, thus, the coaches clearly employed fun to reinforce their use of a number of dominant disciplinary training practices. As a result, instead of operating as a positive force for athlete engagement, the incorporation of fun further legitimized and perpetuated coaches’ ‘normal’ training practices