Abstract
Realistic ethnography is especially recommended in research about body culture as it requires a degree of involvement that blurs the boundaries between researchers’ personal, professional, and academic life. This study aims to point out the advantages of using this specific methodology in a sport environment and offer theoretical and methodological support to those who intend to experience such an ethnographic venture. We used the research process adopted in a PhD thesis that addressed the relationship between guru and bodybuilding pupil. This study is divided into three main moments that have, as their guiding thread, the empirical process that comprises the forging of a bodybuilding athlete: in the first one, we carry out an approach to realistic ethnography; in the second one, we highlight the strategies of methodological rigor and interpretive validity related to realistic ethnography; and in the third one, we describe a proposal to operationalize the analytical movement of the findings prospected in the field. Realistic ethnography enables us to capture “from within,” and in a deeply implicated way, the constituent elements of a very particular culture, in this case, the relationship of obedience between pupil and bodybuilding guru, which we lack access to without the deep bodily immersion of a researcher in one of the poles of this relationship.
Keywords
Ethnography; Qualitative Research; Physical Education