Performance Cultures and Doped Bodies: Challenging Categories, Gender Norms, and Policy Responses

Building on data gathered through ethnographic fieldwork, studies of online doping communities, and in-depth case studies, this book embraces the challenge of moving beyond traditional and historical doping dichotomies – such as those of sport or fitness, online or offline, pleasure or harm, masculinity or femininity, and health or harm – and, in a sociologically informed analysis, it develops new terminology to understand trajectories to and from doping. It argues there are multiple ways to understand doped bodies and doping practices, and that we must approach these questions from the perspective of both/and rather than either/or. By imploding these divisions, it offers updated and nuanced ways of both empirically and theoretically rethinking doping use and experiences attached to the practice.