Speaker
Description
The sports environment, and more specifically football, is well known for being a context in which hegemonic notions of masculinity are still prevalent (e.g. Anderson & McGuire, 2010, Burgess, Edwards & Skinner, 2003). This poses several challenges for female* researchers conducting ethnographic fieldwork in explicitly gendered contexts. Research suggests a number of potential issues, among others, being patronised, marginalised and subjected to sexist attitudes (e.g. Horn 1997, Lumsden 2009, Pini 2005, Tarrant 2016, Wolfers-Pommerenke, fc).
Drawing on over 60 hours of audio-recorded interactions among male professional and elite football players from Germany in the locker room, on the side-line and substitutes’ bench before, during and after football matches and training, as well as interviews with 21 players, I critically reflect on my own role as the researcher and marked outsider in many respects. My particular focus is the kinds of gendered and often sexualised identities the players regularly assign to me in discursive interaction – largely ignoring professional identity categories. Based on my own experiences, the methodological implications of tolerating and challenging heterosexist treatment during fieldwork are discussed. Findings show that in ethnographic research projects the construction of gendered and sexualised identities is potentially always relevant to data collection and research outcome. Ultimately, the paper aims to open a discussion about the challenges faced by many researchers entering gendered environments such as male sports and calls for greater reflexivity and transparency with regards to the role of the researcher.
