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Abstract
In this article, I address some of the emerging debates surrounding the ontological turn in qualitative inquiry. To do so, I highlight recent conversations in the field related to evidence, knowledge and research practices. Framing these conversations as part of a broader ‘methodologically contested present’ within qualitative inquiry, I attend to the ways in which qualitative researchers in the field of sport, exercise and health-related disciplines are pushing these conversations forward. As well, I highlight key questions and the ramifications thereof for engaging with what has been termed ‘post-qualitative inquiry’. I conclude by offering several points of departure for situating the philosophy of inquiry at the centre of any debate concerning research methods and methodologies.
Notes
This manuscript is based on a keynote address given by the author to the 5th International Qualitative Research in Sport and Exercise (QRSE) conference, Chichester, England, August 31 2016. I thank the conference director, Melissa Day, and all of the members of the conference’s organising committee for extending the invitation and for organising such an invigorating conference. I also thank Norman Denzin, Brett Smith and Michele Donnelly for ongoing discussions about the arguments presented herein. Special thanks are due as well to Kerry McGannon and Michael Atkinson, co-editors of QRSEH, for inviting me to contribute a version of my keynote to the journal.
1. St. Pierre (Citation2013), who is largely credited with introducing the term ‘post-qualitative inquiry’ into the lexicon of qualitative inquiry, refers to such work as ‘a diverse array of analyses to interrogate the ontological and epistemological order of things in Enlightenment humanism’ (p. 647).
2. Physical cultural studies largely but not exclusively grew out of sustained engagement with the British cultural studies work of the 1960s and 1970s (Stuart Hall, Larry Grossberg, etc.). It has come to be applied most especially to cultural studies-informed studies of the active, moving body. Patricia Vertinsky has defined its broad topic of inquiry as those ‘cultural practices in which the physical body – the way it moves, is represented, has meanings assigned to it, and is imbued with power’ (as quoted in Smishek Citation2004, para. 5). See also Andrews and Silk Citation2011, Giardina and Newman Citation2011b.
3. Brett Smith (Citation2016) notes that there are two different narrative ‘standpoints’ from which to write: storyanalyst and storyteller. In the first instance, the research studies create narratives through the use of such methods as thematic narrative analysis, grounded theory narrative analysis or rhetorical theory analysis. In the latter instance, the researcher creates the narrative via such approaches as autoethnography, creative nonfiction and ethnotheatre (pp. 261–262). Recent examples of narrative analysis in sport, exercise and health include Barbour (Citation2011), Laurendeau (Citation2011), Ellis (Citation2014), Fisette (Citation2015), McMahon et al. (Citationin press) and Sparkes (Citation2002).
4. Briefly stated, posthumanism (literally, beyond humanism or beyond the human) takes into consideration work being done on/in cyborg theory, actor–network theory and bioethics from sociocultural or philosophical standpoints. Andy Miah’s (Citation2004; Citation2008, with Emma Rich) work is considered a classic with respect to sport, posthumanism and human performance studies.
5. New materialism is a term given to the emerging spaces of inquiry that places a renewed focus on matter and materiality, especially as it relates to nature and agency. It is most commonly associated with the work of Karen Barad, Jane Bennett, Rosi Braidotti and Elizabeth Grosz. William Connolly (Citation2013) broadly defines the spaces of new materialism as ‘a series of movements in several fields that criticise anthropocentrism, rethink subjectivity by playing up the role of inhuman forces within the human, emphasise the self-organising powers of several nonhuman processes, explore dissonant relations between those processes and cultural practice, rethink the sources of ethics, and commend the need to fold a planetary dimension more actively and regularly into studies of global, interstate and state politics (p. 399). For more, see Diana Coole and Samantha Frost’s (Citation2010) excellent collection of essays, New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics. For work in the sociocultural study of sport that takes up new materialism, see Andrews et al.’s (Citationforthcoming) book, Sport, Physical Culture, and the Moving Body: Materialism, Technologies, Ecologies. See also the work of Simone Fullagar (Citation2017) and Gavin Weedon (Citation2015)
6. These include, but are not limited to, the idea that (post-)qualitative research is in direct contradiction to conventional humanist qualitative research, which St. Pierre (Citation2011) defines as qualitative research that ‘has become so disciplined, so normalised, so centred – especially because of recent assaults by SBR [scientifically-based research] – that it has become conventional, reductionist, hegemonic, and sometimes oppressive and has lost its radical possibilities to produce different knowledge and produce knowledges differently’ (p. 613). Despite this broad, dichotomous distinction, such philosophically different projects are oftentimes still lumped together somewhat generally under a banner of ‘qualitative’ research.
7. Whether this book achieved or even contributed to its intended goal or not is, of course, open for discussion. It did, however, receive the 2006 ‘Outstanding Book Award’ from the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport (NASSS), which in the least marks it as resonating among some readers.
8. As was noted in a recent article (see Bunds and Giardina Citation2016), senior scholars have both an imperative to make calls to change the field, but must also be aware that many in the field do not have the political capital to implement such changes, and thus must work within the system lest they get worked over by it (as Julianne Cheek would say).
9. This question is in stark departure to the re-emergent paradigm wars of the 2000s, in which qualitative researchers quite literally found their very legitimacy in the neoliberal university challenged (see Denzin and Giardina Citation2006).
10. I borrow the term ‘onto-epistemology’ from Karen Barad (Citation2007), who defines it as ‘the study of the intertwined practices of knowing and being’, thus conjoining ‘ontology’ and ‘epistemology’ to mark their ‘inseparability’ (p. 409).
11. St. Pierre et al. (Citation2016), invoking the work of Harding (Citation1987), explain the distinctions between method, methodology and epistemology by ‘defining methods as techniques for gathering evidence… [and] methodologies as broader, theory-driven frameworks for how projects should proceed. Epistemology is the theory of knowledge (e.g. empiricism, rationalism) that, together with ontology, the theory of being, enables methods and methodologies’ (p. 105).
12. In this telling, ‘Language, words from interviews and fieldnotes, becomes data, brute data, which, it is assumed, can contain meaning that language, in turn, can represent. The assumption is that language not only is the truth (data, evidence) but can also stand in for the truth (be clear, transparent, objective) in mirroring reality’ (St. Pierre Citation2017, p. 60, emphases in original).
13. I thank Brett Smith for suggesting this term in the context of a different paper.
14. The implication being that they haven’t engaged philosophically with or troubled different ways of knowing and ways of being.
15. This paragraph, and the two that follow, is taken from and updates arguments in Giardina Citation2016, p. 469.
16. There is also the critique that such debates are the purview of the ivory tower and do not actually contribute to practical, real-world change – especially when the audit culture of academia is oriented towards grant funding, ‘impact’ and ‘translational’ research.
17. Robert Klee’s (Citation1998) book Scientific inquiry: Readings in the philosophy of science is a good start.
18. I recall attending a presentation one time in which the presenter gave an accounting of a project that was squarely positioned within a post-positivist paradigm. The person’s use of particular methods was appropriate and accurately deployed in the project. In short, there was nothing ‘wrong’ with the research; it was technically sound and proficient. However, when an audience member inquired about the use of survey methods in the project, the response was along the lines of ‘Well, this is how I was taught to do research’. But what the person was essentially saying was this: ‘I was taught to do research using survey methods, which are widely used in my field, so that’s why I used them it in this project’. But that’s not a good enough answer; that’s just perpetuating a reliance on a particular method without having to attend to the philosophy of inquiry.
19. As an exercise in self-reflexivity, I would ask that you take a few minutes to consider these questions; you may be surprised at the answers you find yourself giving.