( pn16 )
Arthur Gaillard
Nationality: France
Residence: Mexico
Independent scholar
Presence:Online
Ben Hildred
Nationality: United Kingdom
Residence: United Kingdom
Durham University
Presence:Online
IUAES Affiliation: Anthropology of Sports
Sport, epistemology, creativity, change, transformation
The tension in sport between discipline and creativity, continuity and change, or stasis and invention prompts us to think about knowledge production more generally. The creative ways that people resist form and structure when navigating their lifeworlds is a staple of anthropological narratives. But more recently, we have seen similar tensions debated elsewhere in the discipline, including so-called ‘negative’ anthropology (Navaro, 2020), visual and multimodal anthropology (Dattatreyan & Marrero-Guillamón, 2019, Grimshaw & Ravetz, 2015), and the decolonial movement (Alonso Bejarano et al., 2019; Mafeje, 2001; Restrepo & Escobar, 2005). These debates highlight that anthropological knowledge itself is often determined by a similar oscillation between form and creativity.
We suggest the ubiquity of these tensions in sporting practice indicate sport is a particularly apt context for considering issues of knowledge production both ethnographically and theoretically. Anthropologists of sport usually bring prior knowledge of their sport to fieldwork, and can therefore readily identify these tensions. However, this also means they must navigate such contexts carefully when representing such tensions accurately. This prompts us to consider issues of collaboration in our work, whether exploring sporting practice together with our interlocutors, or producing anthropological knowledge that better represents their interests. Such considerations contribute to contemporary debates about knowledge production and social transformation within anthropology.
We call for anthropologists of sport to consider the dynamics of knowledge production that occur when tensions exist between form and creativity. We particularly invite papers that consider the ramifications of this tension in both their ethnographic interactions and in their own knowledge producing practice.
We invite paper abstracts around (but not limited to) the following themes: