Sport, Professionalism and Pain: Ethnographies of Injury and Risk

This exciting new study explores ethical dilemmas in the relationship between sporting performance, sports medicine and the health of the athlete. The author argues that global processes of commercialization and professionalization within contemporary sport have magnified the demands for increased levels of bodily performance, and that the commodification of sporting performance has influenced the balance between risk, pain and injury in sport. Drawing on cutting-edge ethnographic case-studies, including elite rugby union and the Paralympic Games, the author develops a new theory of the link between medicine, the body and culture, and asks whether the athlete or the administrator has more control over the body of the sportsperson.