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

En février 2023, l’IDHES, en partenariat avec le laboratoire ISP,  a l’honneur d’accueillir James J. Brittain, Professeur, Department of Sociology & Social and Political Thought Graduate Program, Acadia University (Canada).

Date

Vendredi 10 février 2023, 15 h – 17 h

Lieu

Université Paris Nanterre
bâtiment Max Weber, rez-de-chaussée, salle de séminaire 2
200 avenue de la République
92 000 Nanterre
Comment venir ?

Organisation

Yan Dalla Pria, Université Paris Nanterre, IDHES

Présentation de la conférence

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.