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.