F Ohl
Biographic Data
| ID | 43458 |
|---|---|
| NAME | F Ohl |
| GIVEN NAMES | F |
| FAMILY NAME | Ohl |
| SIGNATURE | OHL F |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Lausanne |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6998-8182 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 92 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 35 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
The production of distrust in anti-doping: The case of the 23 Chinese swimmers
Trust is considered central to the functioning of the anti-doping system, yet it is undermined by scandals. This article analyses the 23 Chinese swimmers case to understand trust in anti-doping. Using Benford and Snow's ideas in combination with Bourdieu’s framework, we conducted a frame analysis on a corpus of organisational statements ( n = 70) and media articles ( n = 135) discussing the case. We aimed to understand how actors framed themselve…
The Dramaturgy of Science and Expertise at the World Anti-Doping Agency: Civic Epistemologies for Anti-Doping
Anti-doping policy is a key component of integrity in sports, and one for which science and technology are central resources. It represents a genuinely transnational sector of policy-making that so far has received little attention in science and technology studies. Anti-doping has evolved into a worldwide detection and sanctioning system, supervised by a central regulatory body, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Looking at anti-doping as a ca…
The Usada’s supposed orthodox approach to anti-doping: A power strategy and a threat to trust
This article analyses the roots of the significant tensions between USADA and WADA over the revelations that 23 Chinese swimmers were found to have a banned substance in 2021. USADA described the revelation as a scandal and criticised WADA for a lax policy that failed to fulfil its role. USADA's position, which can be described as a way of overplaying orthodoxy, is seen as an attempt to control the "doxa" of sport and thus gain power within the O…
Symbolic power of sports journalists as challenged by external recognition of women’s sports performance
This study examines journalists’ working experiences to understand how they hinder the recognition of female footballers’ performances. It relies on 16 semi-structured interviews with Swiss sports journalists on Swiss French-speaking television. Guided by Pierre Bourdieu’s theory, the study shows that advancements in the recognition of women’s football are promoted by a combination of external actors’ economic and political powers, while hindranc…
Advocating for athletes or appropriating their voices? A frame and field analysis of power struggles in sport
Although advocacy is central to cultural transformations, claims makers are social actors who struggle for meaning and power. This article focuses on Global Athlete (GA) to analyse the stakes behind advocacy. This sports advocate has engaged a frame keying, even fabrication, to gain recognition in the global sport landscape. GA's activity is examined on two levels. First, the article analyses how, to become a credible actor, GA framed itself by c…
Can the credibility of global sport organizations be restored? A case study of the athletics integrity unit
This paper explores how the credibility of global sport organizations can be renegotiated in a post-scandal context. It draws on a dramaturgical interpretation of social performance and frame analysis to analyze how the Athletics Integrity Unit's first years of operation were perceived by its media audience. The results demonstrate that frame consistency, empirical credibility, and the credibility of the frame articulators contributed to the cons…
Examining the fabrics of match-fixing: The underground sport betting system
This study aims to examine the very fabrics of underground sport betting system that is associated with match-fixing. Mafia, syndicates, and bookmakers are the three levels of actors in the hierarchy. Having grassroots bookmakers as our particular focus, we examine their roles and networks, what regulates the system, and how the system functions. Thanks to our academic links with the mafia, we had access to bookmakers to carry out observations an…
“Dirty Work” in the Context of Covid-19: Sex Workers’ Adaptation in Taiwan
The COVID-19 pandemic primarily affects people in precarious conditions, and sex workers are in a vulnerable position because their occupation is usually considered "dirty work." Examining the cases in Taiwan, we find that contrary to general imagination, sex workers managed to make their living not only by diversifying their economic activities but also by reorganizing their core services—sex. Moreover, they were able to adapt their relations wi…
Fight Against Doping as a Social Performance: The Case of the 2015–2016 Russian Anti-Doping Crisis
In 2016, the Olympic Movement had to face a major crisis of state sponsored doping in Russia. This crisis raised suspicions about the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the World Anti-doping Agency’s (WADA) efficiency and integrity. This article focuses on the Russian doping case, as it offers rich and diverse empirical material that helps understand the social context of the production and circulation of performance. To this end, we artic…
Clean athlete status’ cannot be certified: Calling for caution, evidence and transparency in ‘alternative’ anti-doping systems
How Can They Like Doing That?” The Ambivalent Definition of Legitimate Work in Sports Journalism
This paper investigates the opposing definitions of legitimate journalism between female and male sports reporters in the Swiss daily press, observable through the tensions in the division of work, task hierarchies, and contradictory definitions of what is perceived as distasteful or undesirable. It aims to adopt an inclusive approach that avoids being judgemental towards male perspectives or adopting a cynical view of female journalists, to bett…
The toxic doxa of 'clean sport' and IOC's and Wada's quest for credibility
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) have been held accountable for the 'Russian crisis,' a major state-sponsored doping scandal, which began in 2014. The scandal has brought intense scrutiny on the IOC's and WADA's efficiency in curbing doping. This paper argues that their impaired credibility should not only be explained through their objective failure in preventing doping in Russia but can be mainly…
Cycling alone: Team Sky's difficult quest for credibility during the 2015 Tour de France
This article aims to address the question of credibility as a key issue for sports stakeholders. Due to the number of doping scandals, professional cycling offers an interesting example to understand how agents try building credibility after facing mistrust. The present study provides an example of how a professional team (Sky) faced controversy during the 2015 Tour de France. The dispute about Sky riders' performance reflects the rejection of th…
The social meaning of steps: User reception of a mobile health intervention on physical activity
In recent years, mobile health (mHealth) technologies have received increasing attention from industry and researchers. Such technologies have been the focus of both criticism and high expectations. In this paper, we analyze the integration of mHealth tools in everyday life. Insights into the actual use of such tools have empirical importance and could contribute to our theoretical understanding of mHealth technologies. Our research is based on 2…
Social class, the elite hockey player career and educational paths
This paper focuses on how engaging in hockey as an elite athlete influences educational paths. It relies on qualitative and quantitative methods, including interviews with 36 ice hockey players in Switzerland and 605 respondents who completed a questionnaire. We argue that a strong family belief in sport capital predisposes athletes to leave school early, for both the lower- and upper-middle classes. For families with more economic capital, leavi…
Conversion to bodybuilding
This article aims to study the process of conversion to bodybuilding in order to understand how some gym enthusiasts progressively organise their lives around this activity. Our observations, drawn from an ethnography of a gym and 30 semi-structured interviews with different profiles of gym-goers in French-speaking Switzerland, suggest that the grip that bodybuilding takes on individuals results from processes akin to conversions. Two paths to co…
De la précarité des coureurs cyclistes professionnels aux pratiques de dopage: L’économie des coproducteurs du WorldTour
L’espace du cyclisme se caractérise à la fois par la concurrence entre les cyclistes pour l’obtention des meilleurs classements et celle des organisateurs de course et de l’UCI (Union cycliste internationale) pour leur contrôle. Cette double concurrence produit une concentration de la valeur des compétitions, permet à l’UCI de jouer un rôle de régulateur et a pour effet de structurer le travail des cyclistes et leur forme d’emploi, spécialement e…
Moral disengagement in the legitimation and realization of aggressive behavior in soccer and ice hockey
The aim of the present study was to verify that the level of tolerance for aggression is higher in a collective context than in an individual context (polarization effect), and to test the association between moral disengagement, team and self-attitudes toward aggression, and tolerance and realization of aggressive acts in Swiss male soccer and ice hockey. In individual or collective answering conditions, 104 soccer and 98 ice hockey players view…
La performance sportive comme travail: Introduction
Au cours des dernières décennies, les recherches articulant sport et travail se sont beaucoup développées. Elles portent sur un large ensemble de questions comme le fonctionnement des organisations sportives, les carrières des sportifs de haut niveau, la croissance d’un secteur économique et de métiers de l’intervention sportive, les migrations internationales des sportifs, les discriminations sexuelles ou raciales dans l’accès aux marchés du tra…
Les équipes cyclistes « professionnelles » face aux nouvelles injonctions au professionnalisme
La médiatisation des affaires de dopage a rendu accessibles au public les coulisses de la production de la performance des cyclistes. Confrontées à des contraintes de visibilité de leurs pratiques, les équipes doivent désormais produire des performances crédibles tout en affirmant une identité professionnelle acceptable. Les équipes du cyclisme professionnel sont inégalement armées pour faire face à cette nouvelle donne. Celles qui disposent de r…
Assessing the sociology of sport: On sport organizations and critical knowledge
On the 50th anniversary of the ISSA and IRSS, a key scholar in the development of the sociology of sport in continental Europe, Fabien Ohl, reflects on Francophone traditions in the development of the field. Considered first is the emergence and recognition of the sociology of sport within Francophone traditions in sociology on one hand and the need to 'lean' on the sport sciences on the other. The challenges for the sociology of sport are consid…
The socialization of young cyclists and the culture of doping
The objective of this article is to understand how the specific interactions between actors involved in the production of performance influence the socialization process by which cyclists learn their job. In particular, we try to understand how these interactions determine the reported attitudes towards doping products and methods. We focused on the interactions within the work group to understand how young cyclists learn their job. While analysi…
An alternative approach to the prevention of doping in cycling
Using sport to cope with cystic fibrosis
After a relatively normal childhood, people suffering from cystic fibrosis reach a stage where they are progressively confronted with increasingly crippling functional limitations. Some of them nonetheless regularly undertake physical and/or sporting activity. It is then interesting to examine the process of commitment to a practice that is based on the idea of progress and often exceptional performance by the body but which, for these people, ma…
Le couple à l’épreuve du désengagement sportif: Accompagnements, arrangements et tensions
En fin de carrière, les triathlètes vivent souvent en couple et l’arrêt de la compétition sportive a des effets sur la trame conjugale. Alors qu’une grande partie de l’existence et de l’identité du couple est consacrée à la pratique du triathlon, le désengagement sportif en modifie indéniablement les équilibres. L’organisation des rôles au sein du couple n’est pas un processus linéaire et l’effet du désinvestissement sportif n’a pas été vraiment …
Women Sports Journalists in Switzerland: Between Assignment and Negotiation of Roles
In this paper, we analyze working experiences of female sports journalists in the French-speaking Swiss daily press. We draw on Bourdieu’s theory of habitus and field to examine how structures of power shape these journalists’ lives. Based on 27 semistructured interviews and observations in the field, we found that women journalists’ work experiences depend on the relationship between their position in the field and their ethos and hexis. We iden…
Social class, the elite hockey player career and educational paths
This paper focuses on how engaging in hockey as an elite athlete influences educational paths. It relies on qualitative and quantitative methods, including interviews with 36 ice hockey players in Switzerland and 605 respondents who completed a questionnaire. We argue that a strong family belief in sport capital predisposes athletes to leave school early, for both the lower- and upper-middle classes. For families with more economic capital, leavi…
Goût et culture de masse: L'Exemple Du Sport
On ne peut pas traiter du goût de la même façon dans une période de relative rareté des consommations et dans une situation d'abondance de l'offre, d'impact significatif des médias et d'influence croissante du marketing. C'est pourquoi l'article propose, en s'appuyant sur des exemples pris dans les consommations liées au sport, une analyse critique de la modélisation du goût proposée par P. Bourdieu. En effet, les liens entre habitus, goûts et co…
The socialization of young cyclists and the culture of doping
The objective of this article is to understand how the specific interactions between actors involved in the production of performance influence the socialization process by which cyclists learn their job. In particular, we try to understand how these interactions determine the reported attitudes towards doping products and methods. We focused on the interactions within the work group to understand how young cyclists learn their job. While analysi…
Social use of objects: The 'Sports' Look in the City
La massification de la consommation de tenues sportives s'explique par des transformations structurelles. En effet, la place du spectacle sportif dans les médias, la survalorisation de l'héroïsme sportif, l'emprise du marketing et diverses mutations sociales s'épaulent pour faire de la culture sportive une culture prisée des adolescents. L'usage du paraître sportif par cette population essentiellement masculine, exprime une volonté de s'approprie…
How Can They Like Doing That?” The Ambivalent Definition of Legitimate Work in Sports Journalism
This paper investigates the opposing definitions of legitimate journalism between female and male sports reporters in the Swiss daily press, observable through the tensions in the division of work, task hierarchies, and contradictory definitions of what is perceived as distasteful or undesirable. It aims to adopt an inclusive approach that avoids being judgemental towards male perspectives or adopting a cynical view of female journalists, to bett…
The toxic doxa of 'clean sport' and IOC's and Wada's quest for credibility
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) have been held accountable for the 'Russian crisis,' a major state-sponsored doping scandal, which began in 2014. The scandal has brought intense scrutiny on the IOC's and WADA's efficiency in curbing doping. This paper argues that their impaired credibility should not only be explained through their objective failure in preventing doping in Russia but can be mainly…
Cycling alone: Team Sky's difficult quest for credibility during the 2015 Tour de France
This article aims to address the question of credibility as a key issue for sports stakeholders. Due to the number of doping scandals, professional cycling offers an interesting example to understand how agents try building credibility after facing mistrust. The present study provides an example of how a professional team (Sky) faced controversy during the 2015 Tour de France. The dispute about Sky riders' performance reflects the rejection of th…
La reconversion des sportifs: Une épreuve de la petitesse
Le sport de haut niveau se caractérise par une emprise très importante de l’espace et du temps et une définition de soi très liée au statut de sportif. Notre étude porte sur les conséquences de cette emprise lors de l’arrêt d’une carrière sportive. Nous avons pris l’exemple du triathlon. Bien qu’il y ait peu de triathlètes professionnels en France, il y a de nombreux « anonymes » du haut niveau dont les professions aménagées leur permettent de se…
Conversion to bodybuilding
This article aims to study the process of conversion to bodybuilding in order to understand how some gym enthusiasts progressively organise their lives around this activity. Our observations, drawn from an ethnography of a gym and 30 semi-structured interviews with different profiles of gym-goers in French-speaking Switzerland, suggest that the grip that bodybuilding takes on individuals results from processes akin to conversions. Two paths to co…
Les objets sportifs: Comment des biens banalisés peuvent constituer des référents identitaires
L'article se propose de montrer que l'usage des objets sportifs comme référents identitaires est relativement exemplaire des changements plus vastes faisant de la consommation un élément important de l'affirmation de soi. La déstabilisation des grands repères symboliques de nos sociétés a donné à ces objets banalisés, généralement peu durables, produits et vendus à l'échelle internationale, une importance qui va bien au-delà de leur utilité. Les …
Advocating for athletes or appropriating their voices? A frame and field analysis of power struggles in sport
Although advocacy is central to cultural transformations, claims makers are social actors who struggle for meaning and power. This article focuses on Global Athlete (GA) to analyse the stakes behind advocacy. This sports advocate has engaged a frame keying, even fabrication, to gain recognition in the global sport landscape. GA's activity is examined on two levels. First, the article analyses how, to become a credible actor, GA framed itself by c…
Can the credibility of global sport organizations be restored? A case study of the athletics integrity unit
This paper explores how the credibility of global sport organizations can be renegotiated in a post-scandal context. It draws on a dramaturgical interpretation of social performance and frame analysis to analyze how the Athletics Integrity Unit's first years of operation were perceived by its media audience. The results demonstrate that frame consistency, empirical credibility, and the credibility of the frame articulators contributed to the cons…
Moral disengagement in the legitimation and realization of aggressive behavior in soccer and ice hockey
The aim of the present study was to verify that the level of tolerance for aggression is higher in a collective context than in an individual context (polarization effect), and to test the association between moral disengagement, team and self-attitudes toward aggression, and tolerance and realization of aggressive acts in Swiss male soccer and ice hockey. In individual or collective answering conditions, 104 soccer and 98 ice hockey players view…
La performance sportive comme travail: Introduction
Au cours des dernières décennies, les recherches articulant sport et travail se sont beaucoup développées. Elles portent sur un large ensemble de questions comme le fonctionnement des organisations sportives, les carrières des sportifs de haut niveau, la croissance d’un secteur économique et de métiers de l’intervention sportive, les migrations internationales des sportifs, les discriminations sexuelles ou raciales dans l’accès aux marchés du tra…
The Denegation of the Economy: The Example of Climbing in France
Free-climbing is used as a privileged way of studying the positioning generated by the meeting of the symbolic economy of sport and a market that is trying to extend its hold on it. In order to understand why money has become an internal problem to the free-climbing space, the article analyses how its symbolic economy and its market are organized. As the economization of free-climbing took place almost simultaneously with its advent, free-climber…
Les commentaires journalistiques sur le sport ont-ils un sens
Les sports mdiatiss prsentent deux caractristiques singulires qui constituent des avantages majeurs sur les marchs des mdias. D'une part, ils facilitent la clbration des individus et des identits plus collectives (nationales, locales ou sexuelles) et, d'autre part, ils ont liavantage dtre assez "techniciss" pour ressembler un spectacle universel. Le geste sportif, rationalis, rpt, contrl et prpar, sest fortement loign de liemprise des cultures lo…
Examining the fabrics of match-fixing: The underground sport betting system
This study aims to examine the very fabrics of underground sport betting system that is associated with match-fixing. Mafia, syndicates, and bookmakers are the three levels of actors in the hierarchy. Having grassroots bookmakers as our particular focus, we examine their roles and networks, what regulates the system, and how the system functions. Thanks to our academic links with the mafia, we had access to bookmakers to carry out observations an…
Les équipes cyclistes « professionnelles » face aux nouvelles injonctions au professionnalisme
La médiatisation des affaires de dopage a rendu accessibles au public les coulisses de la production de la performance des cyclistes. Confrontées à des contraintes de visibilité de leurs pratiques, les équipes doivent désormais produire des performances crédibles tout en affirmant une identité professionnelle acceptable. Les équipes du cyclisme professionnel sont inégalement armées pour faire face à cette nouvelle donne. Celles qui disposent de r…
Using sport to cope with cystic fibrosis
After a relatively normal childhood, people suffering from cystic fibrosis reach a stage where they are progressively confronted with increasingly crippling functional limitations. Some of them nonetheless regularly undertake physical and/or sporting activity. It is then interesting to examine the process of commitment to a practice that is based on the idea of progress and often exceptional performance by the body but which, for these people, ma…
Les commentaires journalistiques sur le sport ont-ils un sens
Les sports mdiatiss prsentent deux caractristiques singulires qui constituent des avantages majeurs sur les marchs des mdias. D'une part, ils facilitent la clbration des individus et des identits plus collectives (nationales, locales ou sexuelles) et, d'autre part, ils ont liavantage dtre assez "techniciss" pour ressembler un spectacle universel. Le geste sportif, rationalis, rpt, contrl et prpar, sest fortement loign de liemprise des cultures lo…
Social use of objects: The 'Sports' Look in the City
La massification de la consommation de tenues sportives s'explique par des transformations structurelles. En effet, la place du spectacle sportif dans les médias, la survalorisation de l'héroïsme sportif, l'emprise du marketing et diverses mutations sociales s'épaulent pour faire de la culture sportive une culture prisée des adolescents. L'usage du paraître sportif par cette population essentiellement masculine, exprime une volonté de s'approprie…
Goût et culture de masse: L'Exemple Du Sport
On ne peut pas traiter du goût de la même façon dans une période de relative rareté des consommations et dans une situation d'abondance de l'offre, d'impact significatif des médias et d'influence croissante du marketing. C'est pourquoi l'article propose, en s'appuyant sur des exemples pris dans les consommations liées au sport, une analyse critique de la modélisation du goût proposée par P. Bourdieu. En effet, les liens entre habitus, goûts et co…
Les objets sportifs: Comment des biens banalisés peuvent constituer des référents identitaires
L'article se propose de montrer que l'usage des objets sportifs comme référents identitaires est relativement exemplaire des changements plus vastes faisant de la consommation un élément important de l'affirmation de soi. La déstabilisation des grands repères symboliques de nos sociétés a donné à ces objets banalisés, généralement peu durables, produits et vendus à l'échelle internationale, une importance qui va bien au-delà de leur utilité. Les …
The Denegation of the Economy: The Example of Climbing in France
Free-climbing is used as a privileged way of studying the positioning generated by the meeting of the symbolic economy of sport and a market that is trying to extend its hold on it. In order to understand why money has become an internal problem to the free-climbing space, the article analyses how its symbolic economy and its market are organized. As the economization of free-climbing took place almost simultaneously with its advent, free-climber…
La reconversion des sportifs: Une épreuve de la petitesse
Le sport de haut niveau se caractérise par une emprise très importante de l’espace et du temps et une définition de soi très liée au statut de sportif. Notre étude porte sur les conséquences de cette emprise lors de l’arrêt d’une carrière sportive. Nous avons pris l’exemple du triathlon. Bien qu’il y ait peu de triathlètes professionnels en France, il y a de nombreux « anonymes » du haut niveau dont les professions aménagées leur permettent de se…
L'épreuve du dopage
Bastien Soulé, Jean Corneloup, Sociologie de l’engagement corporel. Risques sportifs et pratiques « extrêmes » dans la société contemporaine, Paris, Armand Colin, « Cursus », 2007
De l'oeuvre anthropologique de Christine Berg et de son travail d'criture allant au plus profond des verbes et des choses 1 , aux photographies de Jacqueline Salmon 2 , fragments de plages corporelles, d'appareillages techniques, de jeux de regards et de gestes suspendus en une urgence silencieuse, il n'est qu'un seul acte de recherche offert qui va pntrer en cet ouvrage de la passion.Plusieurs annes intgres dans le service de l'hpital Lariboisir…
Women Sports Journalists in Switzerland: Between Assignment and Negotiation of Roles
In this paper, we analyze working experiences of female sports journalists in the French-speaking Swiss daily press. We draw on Bourdieu’s theory of habitus and field to examine how structures of power shape these journalists’ lives. Based on 27 semistructured interviews and observations in the field, we found that women journalists’ work experiences depend on the relationship between their position in the field and their ethos and hexis. We iden…
An alternative approach to the prevention of doping in cycling
Using sport to cope with cystic fibrosis
After a relatively normal childhood, people suffering from cystic fibrosis reach a stage where they are progressively confronted with increasingly crippling functional limitations. Some of them nonetheless regularly undertake physical and/or sporting activity. It is then interesting to examine the process of commitment to a practice that is based on the idea of progress and often exceptional performance by the body but which, for these people, ma…
Le couple à l’épreuve du désengagement sportif: Accompagnements, arrangements et tensions
En fin de carrière, les triathlètes vivent souvent en couple et l’arrêt de la compétition sportive a des effets sur la trame conjugale. Alors qu’une grande partie de l’existence et de l’identité du couple est consacrée à la pratique du triathlon, le désengagement sportif en modifie indéniablement les équilibres. L’organisation des rôles au sein du couple n’est pas un processus linéaire et l’effet du désinvestissement sportif n’a pas été vraiment …
Femmes dans le journalisme sportif en Suisse: Comment s'ajuster aux passions masculines
Cet article présente les résultats d'une enquête socio-ethnographique au sein de la presse quotidienne sportive romande. Il révèle deux registres vocationnels au sein des journalistes de sport, dans un contexte de féminisation de ce groupe professionnel : là où les hommes évoquent une vocation pour le journalisme sportif, déclinée sur le mode de la passion sportive, les femmes revendiquent plus volontiers un amour de l'écriture et du journalisme.…
De la précarité des coureurs cyclistes professionnels aux pratiques de dopage: L’économie des coproducteurs du WorldTour
L’espace du cyclisme se caractérise à la fois par la concurrence entre les cyclistes pour l’obtention des meilleurs classements et celle des organisateurs de course et de l’UCI (Union cycliste internationale) pour leur contrôle. Cette double concurrence produit une concentration de la valeur des compétitions, permet à l’UCI de jouer un rôle de régulateur et a pour effet de structurer le travail des cyclistes et leur forme d’emploi, spécialement e…
Moral disengagement in the legitimation and realization of aggressive behavior in soccer and ice hockey
The aim of the present study was to verify that the level of tolerance for aggression is higher in a collective context than in an individual context (polarization effect), and to test the association between moral disengagement, team and self-attitudes toward aggression, and tolerance and realization of aggressive acts in Swiss male soccer and ice hockey. In individual or collective answering conditions, 104 soccer and 98 ice hockey players view…
La performance sportive comme travail: Introduction
Au cours des dernières décennies, les recherches articulant sport et travail se sont beaucoup développées. Elles portent sur un large ensemble de questions comme le fonctionnement des organisations sportives, les carrières des sportifs de haut niveau, la croissance d’un secteur économique et de métiers de l’intervention sportive, les migrations internationales des sportifs, les discriminations sexuelles ou raciales dans l’accès aux marchés du tra…
Les équipes cyclistes « professionnelles » face aux nouvelles injonctions au professionnalisme
La médiatisation des affaires de dopage a rendu accessibles au public les coulisses de la production de la performance des cyclistes. Confrontées à des contraintes de visibilité de leurs pratiques, les équipes doivent désormais produire des performances crédibles tout en affirmant une identité professionnelle acceptable. Les équipes du cyclisme professionnel sont inégalement armées pour faire face à cette nouvelle donne. Celles qui disposent de r…
Assessing the sociology of sport: On sport organizations and critical knowledge
On the 50th anniversary of the ISSA and IRSS, a key scholar in the development of the sociology of sport in continental Europe, Fabien Ohl, reflects on Francophone traditions in the development of the field. Considered first is the emergence and recognition of the sociology of sport within Francophone traditions in sociology on one hand and the need to 'lean' on the sport sciences on the other. The challenges for the sociology of sport are consid…
The socialization of young cyclists and the culture of doping
The objective of this article is to understand how the specific interactions between actors involved in the production of performance influence the socialization process by which cyclists learn their job. In particular, we try to understand how these interactions determine the reported attitudes towards doping products and methods. We focused on the interactions within the work group to understand how young cyclists learn their job. While analysi…
Conversion to bodybuilding
This article aims to study the process of conversion to bodybuilding in order to understand how some gym enthusiasts progressively organise their lives around this activity. Our observations, drawn from an ethnography of a gym and 30 semi-structured interviews with different profiles of gym-goers in French-speaking Switzerland, suggest that the grip that bodybuilding takes on individuals results from processes akin to conversions. Two paths to co…
Social class, the elite hockey player career and educational paths
This paper focuses on how engaging in hockey as an elite athlete influences educational paths. It relies on qualitative and quantitative methods, including interviews with 36 ice hockey players in Switzerland and 605 respondents who completed a questionnaire. We argue that a strong family belief in sport capital predisposes athletes to leave school early, for both the lower- and upper-middle classes. For families with more economic capital, leavi…
The social meaning of steps: User reception of a mobile health intervention on physical activity
In recent years, mobile health (mHealth) technologies have received increasing attention from industry and researchers. Such technologies have been the focus of both criticism and high expectations. In this paper, we analyze the integration of mHealth tools in everyday life. Insights into the actual use of such tools have empirical importance and could contribute to our theoretical understanding of mHealth technologies. Our research is based on 2…
“Dirty Work” in the Context of Covid-19: Sex Workers’ Adaptation in Taiwan
The COVID-19 pandemic primarily affects people in precarious conditions, and sex workers are in a vulnerable position because their occupation is usually considered "dirty work." Examining the cases in Taiwan, we find that contrary to general imagination, sex workers managed to make their living not only by diversifying their economic activities but also by reorganizing their core services—sex. Moreover, they were able to adapt their relations wi…
Fight Against Doping as a Social Performance: The Case of the 2015–2016 Russian Anti-Doping Crisis
In 2016, the Olympic Movement had to face a major crisis of state sponsored doping in Russia. This crisis raised suspicions about the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the World Anti-doping Agency’s (WADA) efficiency and integrity. This article focuses on the Russian doping case, as it offers rich and diverse empirical material that helps understand the social context of the production and circulation of performance. To this end, we artic…
Clean athlete status’ cannot be certified: Calling for caution, evidence and transparency in ‘alternative’ anti-doping systems
Political science (24 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Sports, Gender, and Society (18 works) · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts (17 works) · Doping in Sports (13 works) · Law (12 works) · Public relations (12 works) · Education, sociology, and vocational training (10 works) · Humanities (10 works) · Psychology (10 works)