Suchergebnisse

This article assesses "Economic Sociology in the Next Decade and Beyond." In addressing this broad thematic, as it relates to what some have called the new economic sociology , the article notes the "legacy effect" that a polemic with conventional economic conceptualizations has had on the recent reemergence and shape of this field, the relationship that the predominate schools of thought have to one another and the centrifugal tendencies they currently exhibit in this field, and the relationship this field of study currently has to general sociological theories and research streams. The article expressly argues that it is essential to the current and future relevance of the new economic sociology that it seek to bridge key concepts and ideas across methodologically and substantively distinct subfoci within its purview; enhance the theoretical continuity between its findings and theoretical insights and those that explain more generic sociological processes; and more explicitly theorize the role of agency, materiality, and the place of inequality in economic contexts, especially markets, as these are currently undertheorized in this field of study.

Explores the use of drugs and other performance-enhancing practices in sport, tracing the development of the situation through its socio-political history. This work presents a critique of the use of athletes as representatives of political regimes, and the constant striving for medals that has altered the ethos of the Olympic Games.

Through an examination of the challenges to the original, fundamental principles of the Olympic Movement during the post-Second World War era, and the eventual abandonment of those principles, this study poses questions concerning the legitimacy of the IOC's current bannedsubstance list and policies. Using primary and secondary historical evidence, this article establishes the original, fundamental principles upon which Pierre de Coubertin revived the Olympic Games, and then traces the events which, in 1974 — the year the athlete eligibility code was significantly revised in the Olympic Charter — overturned those principles and ushered in the current era of commercialized and professionalized, world class, high performance sport. Significant events in elite sportduring the 'cold war' years from the early 1950s to the mid-1970s created a growing emphasis onperformance and performance enhancement such that substance use — steroids in particular — became common in the East and the West. It is argued that while substance prohibition was consistent with de Coubertin's original principles, the 1974 change to Rule 26 of the Olympic Charter, and the reasons for that change, removed the central principles upon which the list of banned substances could be founded and justified, thereby legitimately opening the banned substance list to question. Inpresenting this history, the article presents a strong case for a thorough, non-partisan review of the IOC's policy on performance-enhancing substances in world class, high performance sport.