Qualitative research in sport, exercise and health in the era of neoliberalism, audit and New Public Management: understanding the conditions for the (im)possibilities of a new paradigm dialogue

Abstract

This article explores a key issue that was left mostly unsaid in a recent special edition of Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health that invited predominantly quantitative researchers to share their views on qualitative research with a view to stimulating dialogue. This key issue is that of power. To explore this unsaid, I offer some reflections on the wider social and political climate that is shaping the lived realities of both quantitative and qualitative researchers. I begin by noting the neoconservative backlash to qualitative research in recent years and the rise of methodological fundamentalism. Next, I consider how the work of all researchers in sport, exercise and health, whatever their paradigmatic persuasions is framed within a climate produced by an audit culture, New Public Management practices, and a neoliberal agenda. From this, I move on to argue that the shared somatic crisis faced by scholars in universities provides an opportunity for a coming together across difference and the possible emergence of a new paradigms dialogue based on a collective response to the powerful forces that shape contemporary academic life.

Keywords:

• somatic crisis
• power
• resistance
• agendas
• best endeavours

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and the following for their reactions to and comments on earlier drafts of this article: David Aldous, Alan Bairner, David Brown, David Carless, Phillip Darbyshire, Bronwyn Davies, Kitrina Douglas, Michael Erben, John Evans, Anne Flintoff, Brendan Gough, Chris Hughes, Michael Loughlin, Steve Robertson, Karl Spracklen and Dennis Tourish. The confusions, contradictions and errors that remain are entirely my own.