Conférence de James J. Brittain

Présentation

 James J. Brittain, “Eating’s Cheating: The power of disordered eating within male professional road cycling”

When weighed against generations past, a clear shift can be observed in contemporary professional male road cycling. Where most high-performance sports applaud expressions of visible musculinity, the peloton demarcates power not through strength-as-observable but rather the absence thereof. In a fascinating inversion of meaning, the most dominant are the most diminished; those who embody the greatest qualitative and quantitative representations of power exhibit a physique more akin to a pre-pubescent boy than chiseled Adonis. Of broad value to both fields of physical and social sciences is the problematic of this counter-depiction of strength. Through an examination of the institutional and sociocultural normalization of disordered eating, the work centres professional male road cyclists as a disregarded but noteworthy sociality. Interrupting constitutions and constructions of power, so too does this cohort of elite athletes prove fertile ground for a needed sociological analysis of cycling’s current practices and its meaning amidst sport.

Organisation