Reflexive methodologies: An autoethnography of the gendered performance of sport/management

Abstract

Autoethnography has emerged as a relatively new methodological approach within the fields of leisure, sport and tourism studies and more broadly within the social sciences. As a reflexive methodology it offers the beginning and experienced researcher a means of critically exploring the social forces that have shaped their own involvement in leisure practices and subsequent professional careers. In this article we discuss the significance of autoethnography as it was utilised by the first author in her student research on women's participation in cricket and the management dilemmas within this sport. The process involved recollecting, writing and re-reading experiences in light of feminist theories that explore the performance of gender through sport. The second author's involvement in the project is discussed in terms of the relational, supervisory context that can foster writing of the self into research within honours and post-graduate programs. In this way the writing practices that mediate knowledge produced about leisure or sport are made transparent and foregrounded within the research process itself. The autoethnographic approach used in this article contributes to the emergent methodological literature that embraces the textual or narrative turn within qualitative studies of leisure and sport.