Perché fare una ricerca in una palestra di boxe?

The overall goal of this essay is to reflect, after six years from publication, on how I circumscribed, conducted and wrote a research with fellow anthropologist Fulvia Antonelli between 2007 and 2010, a research about the practices of everyday life of a group of amateur boxers of the “Tranvieri”, a gym in Bolognina, a district in the outskirts of Bologna. The research employed instruments related to ethnographic practice. I wrote diaries and eld notes relevant to the daily life within the space of the gym. I collected the life stories of the leading members, I conducted in-depth conversations with active and retired boxers, sports journalists, members of regional and national boxing federations, coaches and managers. I put the eld data into a dialogue with reference literature, magazines and literary works, memoirs of the great boxers and monographs as well as scienti c papers. Also, I watched famous boxing movies while reconstructing the history of the Tranvieri, a gym born in 1950 that has always been linked to the Circolo del Dopolavoro Ferroviario, an association of tram drivers in Bologna. Specifc objective of this paper is to reflect, after six years from the publication, on how my methodological choices have in uenced and determined interpretations of this reality.