There are many ways my data complement and expand into new areas from the existing literature in the field of sporting embodiment. Below I canvass some of the key contributions my research offers to the field; including an examination of multiple interlinking mechanisms of athletes’ training and the numerous agents involved in reconstituting athletes into elite subjects.
Much of the sporting embodiment literature examines exercise enthusiasts (Crossley 2004; Sassatelli 2000; Markula 2001; 2003; Dworkin 2003; Dawson 2015; Collins 2002; Scott 2010; Monaghan 2001), or amateur athletes (Wacquant 2004; Hockey and Allen-Collinson 2007; Spencer 2009; Howe 2003), and there are a few investigations into elite athletes’ experiences (Brownell 1995; McMahon and DinanThompson 2011; and Roderick 2006). My research addresses this gap
in the social science literature of sport, and the sporting embodiment literature in particular.
The literature on elite training and the complexity of elite sport at an institution supporting elite athletes is also limited19. Spencer (2009, 120) stated that there is
“a gap in the sociology [and anthropology] of sport and body literature regarding the processes related to the actual acquisition of embodied knowledge and concrete practices of accomplishing sporting activity” (citing Allen-Collinson 2008). I join Spencer (2009) and Allen-Collinson and Hockey (2009) to provide detailed embodied accounts of training.
My research is concerned with examining the reconstitution of elite athletes’ habitus and status as subjects for consistent performance at an elite level. Accordingly, it is necessary to explore the multiple agents involved – including the service providers and the biomedical knowledge and sports science expertise they bring to training athletes. Much of the sporting embodiment literature examines the relationship between sporting bodies and instructors (Crossley 2004; Markula 2003) or athletes and their coaches (Wacquant 2004; Brownell 1995; Denison 2007; Jones, Glintmeyer, and McKenzie 2005; Downey 2008), but few sources examine interactions with other sports medicine and sports science specialists (Allen Collinson 2003). Throughout my fieldwork I gathered extensive data from a wide range of sports science and sports medicine experts about their knowledge and practices in elite sport training and sculpting elite athletes. My data offer insights into the training and micro-regimes and disciplinary
19 For instance, Manley, Palmer and Roderick’s (2012) research about surveillance in English sports
academies examines themes that resonate with my own research. However Manley, Palmer and Roderick’s (2012) research examines “dispersed and interconnected mode of observation” and human networks across various social fields, in contrast to my research which investigates interacting social networks located in one institution.
techniques pivotal to athletes’ training that are scarcely examined in other social science literature.
In my research, I maintained my role as a researcher and did not ‘go native’ and become an elite athlete.20 Over time, I developed trust, rapport and good
relationships with my informants that enabled me to participate in everyday practices, events and rituals, but my role as distinct from those of elite athletes and their intimate inner circles, was not forgotten. No amount of time or effort would change that fact. Sometimes this was frustrating. However, it also enabled me to bring a beginner’s perspective to the work and view the culture of elite sport as an immersed outsider.
Another difference between my work and other literature about sporting bodies, is that my fieldwork focused on gathering data from a broad range of athletes within an elite sporting institution, rather than focusing on the culture of one sport or one team. Much of the sporting embodiment literature has smaller samples of informants, typically from a fairly narrow demographic (for example, all male or female, similar age, athletes from one sport, participants from one circuit class) (Wacquant 2004; Crossley 2004; Cox and Thompson 2000; Spencer 2009; Allen-Collinson and Hockey 2010). In contrast, my research examines Australian elite athletes from a wide range of sports at both junior and senior levels of competition, amateur and professional, abled and disabled athletes, male and female, and a range of ages between fifteen and forty years.
Similarly, the institutional context of AIS athletes’ training in many ways creates similarities and continuities in experience that are difficult to replicate in contexts
20 In contrast to my experience, other researchers who have conducted work among amateur athletes
(Wacquant 2004), exercise enthusiasts (Markula 2001; 2003; Monaghan 1999; Dworkin 2003; Crossley 2004) or social researchers with a background in elite sport (George 2005; McMahon and DinanThompson 2011; Cox and Thompson 2000) have been able to gain membership and become an equal member among their participants.
where sporting pursuits are amateur and injury removes people from the training environment and community (Crossley 2004; Allen Collinson 2003) or where a social milieu of disorder and instability exists that limits consistency in training (Wacquant 2004). Many of the athletes researched live onsite at the AIS campus in Canberra, while other athletes live off-campus, but come to the campus six days a week. With some athletes I had constant interaction during the entire duration of my research, whereas others were passing through from interstate and overseas for varied amounts of time. Despite these differences, all AIS athletes have AIS scholarships and equal access to elite training facilities and service providers. Therefore, the athletes I researched experienced a relatively similar way of life in terms of access to nutrition, training gear, service providers and external specialists, sporting facilities and technological and biomedical resources, in contrast to the restrictions and influences of poverty or class differences that are discussed in other literature (Wacquant 2004; Pelak 2005). Another difference between my research and other related social science literature, is that mine involves a holistic analysis of the interlinking physical, temporal, emotional, mental, subjective and moral processes of training. Such an approach is used in some other limited examples in the literature (Wacquant 2004; Hockey and Allen-Collinson 2007; Allen-Collinson 2009; Markula and Pringle 2006); however many others acknowledge but do not address all of the elements in great depth. In this way my research provides a heuristic approach to assessing the production of athletes and training processes and an important contribution to anthropological literature and the field of sporting embodiment.