ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the methodological and ontological problems that can accompany the generation of knowledge using the body as an explicit research tool, and attempts to demystify some of the assumptions about authenticity and 'truth' that are commonly connected to such research. It explains a critical sociological reading of sports violence. With a specific focus on the limitations, strictures and biases that are embedded in the effective but fundamentally flawed research tool that is the body, the chapter highlights how the author's embodied engaging in the field enabled the 'doing' of experiences and the collection of data, but simultaneously constrained, hid from view and cast in shadow certain aspects of social life. The sport as a 'male preserve' thesis, holds that within enclaves the recreation of latent patriarchal scripts, increasingly undermined within the majority of other social relations, can continue as relatively unproblematic.
