In this chapter, I describe how narrative research utilising an ethnographic framework and autoethnography evolved as optimal methodologies for this doctoral research project. The term „narrative ethnography‟ (also used by Gubrium & Holstein, 1999; Tedlock, 1991) is used throughout this chapter to refer to narrative research which is shaped and informed by ethnography and undertaken within an ethnographic framework and design. The purpose of the chapter is to outline why and how I came to employ narrative ethnography and autoethnography with specific agendas, relating to both the participants and intended audiences for this research, and to critique the strengths and weaknesses of the methodology specifically in relation to one of the prime methodological aims; the empowerment of participants in the research process.
The title of this chapter signals that emancipation [with the potential of achieving] was a key concept shaping what methodological framework was employed for this thesis. Laurel Richardson‟s (1995) thesis that how we are expected to write affects what we can write about, also guided me in relation to my methodology. Narrative ethnography and autoethnography provided myself and the other two participants with the appropriate space to reveal our knowing and detail our lived experiences. Once I had gained ethics approval (see
Appendixes A and B), supplied participants with an information sheet (see Appendix C) on the study, and achieved the necessary consent from the participants (see Appendix D), I had a telephone conversation with one of the participants. This conversation occurred when this research was in its infancy and led me to critically reflect on my approach and position in the research.
Specifically, I was prompted to consider ways in which I could enhance the collaborative dimension of my work and ensure that the participants‟ best interests were considered and their participation could ultimately be rendered meaningful.
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A telephone conversation from January 2008
Jenny: “Good news! I got ethics through for my PhD last week so we will be starting to collect data from you soon. I will explain more about what we are going to do when you are back from holidays.”
Participant: “It is ok; I can talk now for a while. I am just sitting here in the hotel room.”
Jenny: “Well, I think that we are going to present your stories in the form of unsent letters which means that you would write a story of your experience in a letter format.”
Participant: “What do you mean? Like who would I write a letter to?” Jenny: “There could be a number of people. Think about who you really would like to write a letter to in your swimming career. It could be your Mother, coach, teammate or school friend? It is totally up to you.” Participant: “I think that I would like to write a letter to the Australian coaches who were on the Olympic swimming team with me.”
Jenny: “We are also going to look into stuff on your coaching practices, what you do and how you do it. You will have to write something about that as well. I will have to get your athletes to verify what you have written – to validate what you are saying.”
Participant: “What do you mean? Don‟t you believe what I am going to tell you will be true?
Jenny: “Of course. It is not that. It is kind of what I am expected to do in academia.”
Reflecting on this telephone conversation, I realised that as a researcher, I was in a position of relative power, influence and affluence and needed to strive to be more collaborative in my approach. The participant had little voice in the conversation and my intentions for the research. The more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable I became, realising that I was being exploitive. My intention was that the participant‟s stories would form the primary data of the thesis and
47 represent the very essence of the research. Their voices, my findings, were what could help me make a difference. I realised that I had to alter my approach and implement a framework that would give the research participants the opportunity to achieve emancipation in the research, with the intention of empowering them through their participation.
My previous experiences as an elite swimmer (see McMahon & Dinan- Thompson, 2008) provided me with further impetus to seek out a methodology that would address four important considerations that I regarded as paramount in this research. The first addressed the participants and their voice in the telling of their stories (the primary data). Specifically, the research sought to foreground the swimmers‟ voice and the body‟s voice in the research. I wanted the swimmers‟ voice and their body‟s voice to be employed as the primary data of the research, with the research process seeking to specifically utilise the swimmers‟ strong connection with their bodies, their abilities to „listen to their body‟ and awareness of „how it was feeling,‟ where it was sore, whether it could be pushed further. A related concern was to ensure that power differentials experienced within the Australian swimming culture would not be replicated through the research process. My methodology needed to enable the three participants to have what I see as „meaningful participation‟ in the research, positioning them in a genuine (rather than tokenistic) collaborative relationship with the researchers, and thus providing a distinct contrast to the inequitable power-relationships that I (McMahon & Dinan-Thompson, 2008) described with my immersion in the Australian elite swimming culture.
Consideration was also given to audience, with the intention that the reader would be able to take on and read from the positions and perspectives of the participants, vicariously sharing in their experiences as three adolescent elite swimmers and subsequently, as 30–40 year old women. The appropriate
methodology needed to allow the stories of experience – the primary data – to be presented in such a way that would allow all readers from various backgrounds the opportunity to access and vicariously share in the participants‟ lived
experiences.
Finally, I wanted the participants to gain some purpose from their involvement in the research and recognised that there may be emancipatory
48 potential in this work. This consideration emerged from an initial telephone conversation with one of the participants. Specifically, the act of participation could provide an opportunity for the participants to seek some clarity, gain new insight and achieve „order‟ in relation to their swimmer experiences. In my view, the methodology should seek to facilitate and not deny nor overlook that
emancipatory potential. For Hickey and Austin (2007), autoethnography opens possibilities for participants to be critically reflexive wherein senses of their self and agency might come to be understood in terms of the social processes that mediated their lived experience.I sought to pursue similar potential in using narrative ethnography in combination with autoethnography.
Below I describe how I developed my methodology to address each of the key considerations outlined above. While the considerations provide the focus and structure for this chapter, inevitably, some of the points raised are pertinent to more than one of the considerations. In the concluding section, I focus specifically on the issue of empowerment occurring in and through the research, considering the ways and extent to which the chosen methodology empowered the three participants.