Student-Athletes’ Experiences with Racial Microaggressions in Sport: A Foucauldian Discourse Analysis

Despite growing research on racial microaggressions as a subtle but prevalent form of racial discrimination, research on microaggressions in sport and their effects on the psychosocial wellbeing of athletes is scarce. Moreover, some researchers question the legitimacy of microaggressions due to their subtle nature and inconsistency in how they are experienced (Lilienfeld, 2017). The purpose of this study was to examine U.S. collegiate student-athletes-of-color experiences with racial microaggressions in sport through a new theoretical lens, Foucauldian poststructuralist theory. We theorized microaggressions as an example of the daily panoptic gaze that leads to self-surveillance and the production of normalized individuals (Foucault, 1995). Eight student-athletes-of-color participated in two interviews: a two-person focus group interview followed by an individual interview. The interviews were analyzed deductively using Sue’s (2010) microaggression typology followed by a Foucauldian discourse analysis (Willig, 2013). The results illustrated how student-athletes-of-color experiences and subjectivities were racialized. Within sport, the sport as transcending race discourse was widely circulated and legitimized through various sporting practices, which limited athletes’ ability to perceive and acknowledge race and microaggressions. This study sheds light on how racial microaggressions manifest in the lives of student-athletes and how the discourses and practices we take for granted constitute racial subjectivities

Rethinking the factuality of “contextual” factors in an ethnomethodological mode: Towards a reflexive understanding of action-context dynamism in the theorisation of coaching

In this paper, an argument is made for the revisitation of Harold Garfinkel's classic body of ethnomethodological research in order to further develop and refine models of the action-context relationship in coaching science. It is observed that, like some contemporary phenomenological and post-structural approaches to coaching, an ethnomethodological perspective stands in opposition to dominant understandings of contexts as semi-static causal ‘variables’ in coaching activity. It is further observed, however, that unlike such approaches – which are often focused upon the capture of authentic individual experience – ethnomethodology operates in the intersubjective domain, granting analytic primacy to the coordinative accomplishment of meaningful action in naturally-occurring situations. Focusing particularly on Garfinkel's conceptualization of action and context as transformable and, above all, reflexively-configured, it is centrally argued that greater engagement with the ethnomethodological corpus of research has much to offer coaching scholarship both theoretically and methodologically

Passion and paranoia: An embodied tale of emotion, identity, and pathos in sports coaching.

In response to the wider call to put the person back into the study of coaching, this paper addresses my, the lead author’s, understandings of coaching an amateur women’s football team. Specifically, my co-authors and I critically consider how my embodied emotional experiences and meaning-making were produced in, as well as through, the interaction of the self and other in the club context. Following the presentation of my storied experiences, the complementary works of Burkitt and Scott are deployed as the primary heuristic devices. Here, our interpretation focuses on the interconnections between emotion, identity, and embodied experience. Rather than seeking to provide a singular truth, however, theory is, instead, used to reveal, clarify, and make ambiguous experience more apparent to the reader. In concluding the paper, we advocate a greater integration of emotion into ongoing and future coaching scholarship

Emotions, identity and power in video-based feedback sessions: Tales from women’s professional football.

While video-based feedback has become an increasingly salient feature of practice in high performance sport, it has received relatively little attention in the coaching literature. Data for this study were generated through a process of collaborative critical reflection and cyclical, in-depth interviews with elite female footballers. Using fictional narratives as a mode of representation, we highlight the emotional, embodied, and relational features of two athletes’ experiences of video-based feedback. Burkitt’s writings addressing (complex) emotions and social relations are used as the primary sense-making framework. Consequently, the analysis is grounded in the interconnections between sensate, corporeal experience, and the power relations and interdependencies in which high performance athletes are enmeshed