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- Convenors:
-
Henrike Neuhaus
(NRI, University of Greenwich)
Benjamin Hildred (Durham University)
Sean Heath (KU Leuven)
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- Stream:
- Morality and Legality
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 30 March, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Detecting and experimenting with new directions in researching and understanding body movement this panel attempts to place embodied practices, visual engagement and digital media into a practical discussion about methodologies and to contribute to a framework about research ethics.
Long Abstract:
In this panel, we seek to explore the relationship between moving bodies and the dynamics of power, consent and research ethics in various ethnographic settings. The moving body allows analysing intersections of various phenomena. Visual and sensory anthropology as well as research into physical activity experiment with techniques from observation to rendering the researcher's body to be "at once the seat, the instrument and the target" (Wacquant 2004:16).
The embodied nature of participant observation prompts reflection on ethics and consent in the often intense physical engagements with sports. Particularly, competitions invite moments for (audio-)visual recording which may lead to complex (mis)undertandings between researcher and interlocutor as of expectations regarding the use of the digital and visual material. Problems arise in obtaining fully informed consent in these spaces which are compounded when interlocutors are deemed vulnerable groups. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted the experience of digital media into new registers. Practitioners and researchers had to rethink their practice and find new modalities to continue the physical activity in a new safe environment. Questions of how data gained through digital research can be managed as well as how to best use new technologies in research, what this means for notions of public and private, as well as traditional ideas of the field-site and how to do ethical embodied research in increasingly digitised worlds.
We invite papers that discuss ethics of embodied practice and contemporary methods that are linked to physical movement practices including sport, dance, and martial arts.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 30 March, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
In this paper we scrutinise the ethical tensions of deploying video as a research tool in the fields of sports anthropology.
Paper long abstract:
The use of video has become an integral part of practice in many sports at various standards. Multiple aspects of video, from production through to consumption complicate our understandings of embodied practice, pointing us towards the need for detailed exploration of these ethical implications. By capturing embodied practice, video also lays it open to interpretation, facilitating the generation of new meaning by the participant. The many afterlives of video - on social media, in WhatsApp groups, as coaching tools - show video is an important social phenomenon in the sporting world, with various complicated uses beyond the initial recording. We must understand how our own videos fit within that schema, anticipating any problems that could arise.
Reflecting on our use of video in Argentina and Sri Lanka, the authors explore these aspects of video, showing how our informants use and re-use the anthropologists’ material in their own lives. In some instances, videos are claimed by informants as evidence of their skill; in others, the content and form of videos is contested with the researcher during production. Almost all reflect a tension at work in most embodied practice - the tension between intrinsic, embodied knowledge and post-hoc, rational explanations of that knowledge. The use of video by sportspeople lays bare the nature of video as both a ‘capturing’ tool, and as a generative tool for invoking new understandings of bodily movement. Good, ethical ethnographic work using video must account for this iterative process and the many afterlives of practice.
Paper short abstract:
This paper presents the struggles of engaging in apprenticeship with youth swimmers and considers the wider ethical implications of pariticpation and digital recording and presentation of ethnographic materials of physical movement practices in swimming settings.
Paper long abstract:
As ethnographers our own bodies are the tool with which we approach and record our experiences in the field. Additionally, we frantically scribble down unfolding scenes in notebooks and attempt to record the action on phones or cameras, much as our interlocutors do. The images we capture can often convey the dynamism and subtleties of enskilled movements in embodied practices easing in both the interpretation and communication of bodily activities. With the body being on full display in competitive swimming contexts – albeit at times partially concealed by water – the recording of how and what the body does can be problematic, despite the fact that images and video would seem ideal ways of communicating the bodily experiences of youth swimmers. Yet swimwear is revealing of the body and recording images, especially of youth, necessitates heightened scrutiny for shared images in the digital sphere are available for archiving and reproduction by any member of a group or “friend” who has access to those images on social media platforms. Informed and ongoing consent to capture and use images, and participate in youth’s sporting settings, requires that we consider our use and distribution of images and what purposes our interlocutors might want of and for those images. In this paper I present the struggles of engaging in participant observation with youth swimmers in the UK, the perceived and physical barriers of embodied research and the moral and ethical conundrum of digitally recording their and my own journey.
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on my ethnography on làmb (Senegalese wrestling with punches), I’ll discuss some fieldwork and publishing choices that I have made in order to navigate opposing needs. By commenting on some concrete cases, I’ll then contribute to the common discussion on ethics in embodied practices
Paper long abstract:
Drawing on my ethnography of làmb (Senegalese wrestling with punches), I’ll discuss some ethical issues linked to the tensions between privacy and publicity in the politics of ethnographic fieldwork and publishing. While “observant participation” (Wacquant 2004) in embodied activities may facilitate the access to spaces of “cultural intimacy” (Herzfeld 2005), it does not preserve researchers to take responsibility for the choices made in the field and related to their publication strategies. Instead, physical engagement in sporting practices can sharpen some of the ethical dilemmas that ethnographers usually face. In a highly mass-mediated world as that of làmb, practitioners’ self-promotion through the management of their public image is paramount. Since long-term fieldwork tends to reveal the discrepancy between public presentation and practices enacted in situations of “social intimacy”, the researcher has to contend with ethical conundrums (Herzfeld 2005). In my case, on the one hand, the unveiling of this discrepancy could have damaged my teammates public images. On the other, the careful representation of the practices protected to external inspection and the analysis of encompassing cultural arenas could have permitted a critique of power structures and discourses, which contributed to the marginalization of my interlocutors. Conversely, while some wrestlers asked me to publish audio-visual materials as a kind of advertising, those same photos and videos risked reproducing among some European audiences exoticizing stereotypes on the African people. By discussing some choices made in order to navigate these tensions, I’ll contribute to the common reflection on ethics in embodied practices.
Paper short abstract:
The pandemic made us rethink our research and find new modalities to continue our work. This paper explores the complexity of moving talks on sensitive topics and punishable acts from our original field site to the online domain and the ethical considerations accompanied.
Paper long abstract:
This paper reflects on talking about antisemitism with football supporters in the Netherlands. Some football clubs in the Netherlands are regularly confronted with antisemitic behaviour on their stands. Supporters sing chants such as ‘Hamas, Hamas all Jews to the gas’. This behaviour is often linked to the rivalry with the supposedly ‘Jewish’ club Ajax based in Amsterdam (Spaaij, 2007; Gans, 2016). Most supporters do not see themselves as antisemites, even if they chant antisemitic songs or behave in an antisemitic manner, they attribute their behaviour to their clubs' rivalry with Ajax. However, discrimination and therefore football related antisemitic behaviour is punishable by Dutch law. Supporters guilty of discrimination or antisemitism face a stadium ban up to 10 years. In this paper I will discuss how talking with supporters about sensitive topics and illegal acts with football supporters is increasingly complex due to the ongoing pandemic. Some groups of supporters suffer from persistent negative stigma and are burdened with a reputation for violent behaviour. This makes it difficult to discuss antisemitism and violent behaviour in a ‘normal’ research setting, shifting these discussions towards the online domain has put another level of difficulty on the matter. While talking to people online might solve some of the delays in finding interlocutors, people might be even more hesitant to share their views and experience with antisemitism during a video call. This presentation explores possible solutions and ways to talk about sensitive topics in an online environment.