School of Social and Political Sciences - Theses
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ItemCitius, altius, fortius: a critical and exploratory analysis of sport and drugs discourses in Australian Football League( 2006-09)Performance enhancing drugs in sport typically evokes a strong negative response. To make sense of this response and the drug policies it spurns this thesis undertakes a critical exploratory analysis of the discourses which surround illicit drugs and sport and the intersections between them. It looks at the globalisation of these discourses, assessing its manifestations in the World Anti-Doping Agency. A review of the literature finds that the strong desire to prohibit performance enhancing drugs stems from the global recognition of the cultural import of sport as a conduit for collective representation. Drugs and their symbolic associations with deviance and boundary violation are interpreted as a direct threat to this cultural role and so are vociferously fought. However, this emotionally driven response distracts from the task of addressing the pressures within the competitive sporting world. An analysis of the global impact of these discourses on local context follows. A contextual analysis finds that the Australian Football League, can consume, resist and transform global discourses on drugs and sport. A content analysis of the press news looks at this process at work in a recent scandal of caffeine as a performance enhancing drug. It concludes that rather than simply accepting the direction of the WADA, the debate reflected that the Australian context both magnified the symbolism of drugs in sport and contradictorily attracted increased criticism of it.