Athletes and doping
This article has a triple objective: to challenge concepts of doping sanctioned by legal and medical authorities and to critically reconsider the place of social science analyses in relation to biomedical hegemony in regard to doping, an attempt to model the power founded on the relation of the products’ hold over the athletes. To this end, empirical material gathered during preceding investigations (interviews of athletes involved in doping, published testimonies) is mobilized and systematically analysed. The study of various cases involving recourse to doping products questions ordinary concepts of doping and reveals the presence of acts in which the relational dimension is determining, where the unanimity and simplicity of the boundaries between doping and a medically assisted preparation become blurred, in which the process is reversible, and finally a continuum is observed in the possible uses of the products. A model is then proposed that seeks to understand the relations of power in doping through the mechanisms of the hold over persons, situations and products, combined in different configurations.