Abstract

ALSINA, Diego; MORA, Bruno  and  PASTORINO, Martina. Ethical dilemmas in sports ethnographies in Uruguay: gymnasts, wrestlers and footballers-murgueros. Rev. urug. Antropología y Etnografía [online]. 2024, vol.9, n.1, e105.  Epub June 01, 2024. ISSN 2393-7068.  https://doi.org/10.29112/ruae.v9i1.2281.

With colleagues from the Group of Social and Cultural Studies on Sport (ISEF, Udelar), we have been experimenting with ethnography, as a method, approach strategy and text (Guber, 2001), to observe and think about sport in Uruguay. This has meant consolidating a theoretical-methodological perspective to approach the sports phenomenon, and a particular positioning when it comes to positionate ourselves with the field as researchers. However, this process has implied the recognition of a few conflicts and dilemmas when we take methodological decisions, and when we are reporting our field research journals. On this occasion, our aim is to analyze the link between the ethnographic method and sport practices. And we will do so from the experience of three individual researches: an ethnography in a combat sports gym in Montevideo (Mora, 2018), an ethnography of artistic gymnastics (Pastorino, 2023) in Maldonado, and an ethnography in a club in the city of San Carlos in which football and murga are related practices (Alsina, 2023). We will not put the attention into describe each of the practices, but to show them as examples of the potential of the ethnographic method to study bodily practices, and also to reflect on the places of those we investigate, the strategies of positioning in relation to the studied field (the optimal and possible distances and proximities) and the theoretical links that arise from this process.

Keywords : sport; culture; ethnography; Uruguay.

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