Researching everyday sporting masculinities: thoughts from a (critical) distance

Abstract

In response to a review of the book Everyday masculinities and extreme sport: male identity and rock climbing (2008), the author offers thoughts from a (critical) distance on two central issues the review raised: namely, that of the status of ‘everyday data’ and the use of interviews as a research method. The conclusions reached are that in research on sporting masculinities we need to interrogate the everyday to enable us to, amongst other things, explore how the public world of sport cannot be understood in a nuanced manner unless we also investigate both the private sphere and the emotional/subjective aspects of sporting identities. Further, the article argues that it is necessary to conceive of interviews in a way which, for example, sees them not as neutral or abstract moments but as a dialectical relationship between the hour(s) of the interview and the life course trajectories of interviewer and interviewee. In addition, a focus on everyday cultures and men's (sporting) masculinities in relation to feelings and motives enables us to have a more fine-grained conception of masculinity, for instance, across generations or in relation to gender relations. Thus, it is argued that it is important to be continually reflexive over what constitutes (feminist) methodologies on sporting masculinities.

Keywords:

• masculinities
• the everyday
• methodologies
• rock climbing
• ‘extreme’ sports
• feminism