Sport, Technology and the Body

Sport, Technology and the Body What is the nature of athletic performance? This book offers an answer to this fascinating question by considering the relationship between sport, technology and the body. Specifically, it examines cultural resistance to the enhance-ment of athletes and explores the ways in which performance technologies complicate and confound our conception of the sporting body. The book addresses concerns about the technological ‘invasion’ of the ‘natural’ body to investigate expectations that athletic performances reflect nothing more than the actual capacity of the untainted athlete. By examin-ing a series of case studies, including Paralympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius, Fastskin swimsuits, hypoxic chambers and an array of illicit substances and methods, the book distinguishes between internal and external technologies to highlight the ways that performance enhancement, and public reaction to it, can be read. Sport, Technology and the Body offers a powerful challenge to conventional views of athletic performance that stand authenticity against artifice, integ-rity against corruption, and athletic purity against technological intrusion. It is essential reading for all serious students of the sociology, culture or ethics of sport. Tara Magdalinski is the Academic Director of the Centre for Sports Studies at University College Dublin. Her research focuses on the con-struction of social identities and the production of historical narratives through sport. She co-edited With God on Their Side: Sport in the Service of Religion (Routledge, 2002). Sport, Technology and the Body The nature of performance Tara Magdalinski First published 2009 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2009 Tara Magdalinski All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Magdalinski, Tara. Sport, technology and the body / by Tara Magdalinski. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Sports–Sociological aspects. 2. Sports–Physiological aspects. 3. Sports–Moral and ethical aspects. 4. Sports sciences. 5. Athletes– Training of. 6. Performance technology. 7. Body image. 8. Body, Human–Social aspects. I. Title. GV706.5.M33 2009 796.01–dc22 2008016085 ISBN 0-203-09938-9 Master e-book ISBN ISBN13 978-0-41-37877-2 (hbk) ISBN13 978-0-415-37876-5 (pbk) ISBN13 978-0-203-09938-4 (ebk) ... - tailieumienphi.vn