A (re)turn towards the critical? A narrative inquirer and a critical sociologist meet at a cafe to discuss research in 'marginalized' sport and PE communities

Understanding how research paradigms shape research decisions is an important aspect of conducting qualitative research (Sparkes & Smith, 2009). However, in an effort to better understand how qualitative paradigms shape a... [ view full abstract ]

Understanding how research paradigms shape research decisions is an important aspect of conducting qualitative research (Sparkes & Smith, 2009). However, in an effort to better understand how qualitative paradigms shape a project, researchers often establish hard paradigmatic binaries between what they do and the work of others. While on paper these binaries seem to work out neatly, as we engage in actual research, the apparent neatness of competing paradigms often dissolves into a messiness that is far less clear. One of these overlapping spaces, what Clandinin and Rosiek (2007) called a borderland space, exists between critical theory and narrative inquiry in their shared-commitment to understanding human experience. For the critical scholar, research and analysis act jointly as an intervention that seeks to both identify and change the material conditions that underlie oppressive social situations. In contrast, narrative inquiry, in its conventional sense, takes the immediacy of lived experiences, especially its narrative properties, as a fundamental reality that merits examination in and of itself. According to this view, all representations of experience – including representations of the macrosocial influences that shape peoples’ experience – ultimately arise in first-person narrative accounts and, thus, drawing attention to these accounts (Clandindin & Rosiek, 2007, pp. 49-50). In this presentation, we draw on empirical data from two ongoing studies with ‘marginalized’ sport and PE populations to illustrate how paradigmatic commitments to critical theory and narrative inquiry bump and overlap in situ. We tentatively argue that, when confronted by conditions of overwhelming material poverty, the ability to insulate theory from action remains an increasingly untenable position to hold. Nevertheless, we also argue that the narrative inquirer possesses a unique skillset and capability to incite social change, by way of mobilizing emotion through narrative-techniques that emphasize the ‘rawness’ of human experience in tough times.