The normalisation of body regulation and monitoring practices in elite sport: a discursive analysis of news delivery sequences during skinfold testing

Title
The normalisation of body regulation and monitoring practices in elite sport: a discursive analysis of news delivery sequences during skinfold testing
Publication Date
2015
Author(s)
Cosh, Suzanne
( author )
OrcID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8003-3704
Email: scosh@une.edu.au
UNE Id une-id:scosh
Crabb, Shona
Kettler, Lisa
LeCouteur, Amanda
Tully, Phillip J
( author )
OrcID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2807-1313
Email: ptully2@une.edu.au
UNE Id une-id:ptully2
Type of document
Journal Article
Language
en
Entity Type
Publication
Publisher
Routledge
Place of publication
United Kingdom
DOI
10.1080/2159676X.2014.949833
UNE publication id
une:1959.11/26969
Abstract
Prevalence of disordered eating is higher in athlete populations than in the general population. This paper explores the sociocultural context within which athletes are vulnerable to poor health behaviours and potentially poor mental health. Within sport settings, dominant ideals of body regulation and self-surveillance are normalised and leave athletes vulnerable to eating disorders. This paper explores how such ideals and understandings around the body are reproduced within the sporting environment during everyday interactions and how body regulatory practices come to be normalised. This paper draws on discursive psychology, informed by conversation analysis, to examine the news delivery sequences of 40 interactions occurring between elite athletes and sport staff during routine practices of body composition testing taking place in an Australian sport institute network. Through the news delivery sequences of body composition testing scores, practices of body regulation come to be normalised by both athletes and sport staff. Moreover, athletes are positioned as needing continually to improve, thus, (re)producing dominant notions of body regulation as requiring athletes’ self-discipline and surveillance. Discursive practices occurring in sport settings can leave athletes at increased risk of developing unhealthy eating and exercising behaviours and disordered eating. Implications for practice for sport staff are discussed.
Link
Citation
Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 7(3), p. 338-360
ISSN
2159-6778
2159-676X
Start page
338
End page
360

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