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Warren, Ian --- "Crime, Deviance and Doping: Fallen Sports Stars, Autobiography and the Management of Stigma by Majid Yar" [2015] CICrimJust 24; (2015) 27(2) Current Issues in Criminal Justice 247


Review

Crime, Deviance and Doping: Fallen Sports Stars, Autobiography and the Management of Stigma by Majid Yar, Palgrave MacMillan,

2014, 104 pp (ISBN 9781137403759)

Ian Warren[*]

Introduction

Aside from a raft of literature on football hooliganism and sports crowd management strategies since the mid-1980s, criminology has devoted limited theoretical and empirical attention to the area of sport. This is regrettable, as it tends to relegate questions of sport, deviance and social control to the problems of individual or collective violence (Young 2012), rather than the more nuanced facets of local and transnational sports governance (Mitten and Opie 2012), or the various elements of rule development, enforcement and athlete surveillance. Concerns in Australia over the actual and potential influence of organised crime syndicates involved in match-fixing and the distribution of performance- and image-enhancing substances to athletes (ACC 2013) highlight the significance of criminological principles in contemporary sports governance, such as the integration of crime prevention through environmental design with various integrity management procedures (Bricknell 2015). Nevertheless, despite the long-standing theoretical and applied relevance of criminology to various facets of sports competition (Mewett and Perry 1997) and administration, the relationship between these domains remains largely ‘exploratory’ (Warren, Palmer and Whelan 2014:441).

Although limited to the analysis of five published autobiographical narratives by elite athletes who have been detected or banned or have faced criminal prosecution for doping violations, Majid Yar’s significant and timely research helps to clarify many broader conceptual relationships between criminology and sport. Crime, Deviance and Doping is a brief empirical study demonstrating the flow of highly stylised popular sports narratives from early childhood, to aspiring professional, to elite celebrity and public disgrace after being formally ‘outed’ for doping. As part of the Palgrave Pivot series, where word limits are capped at between 25 000 and 50 000 words, the depth of Yar’s analysis of these processes remains somewhat limited. The strength of this contribution, however, lies in the theoretical backdrop that provides an in-depth discussion of the relationship between sport and criminology via the use of first-person narratives.

Chapter structure

Crime, Deviance and Doping consists of two theoretically informed chapters that examine the relationships between criminology, doping, celebrity narrative construction and the biographical details of the five research subjects: British track sprinter Dwain Chambers, United States (‘US’) track sprinter Marion Jones, British road cyclist David Millar, and US road cyclists Tyler Hamilton and Lance Armstrong. This is followed by five very short chapters that follow the narrative sequence of each athlete’s ‘beginnings’ (Chapter 3), ‘initiation’ into elite professional sport (Chapter 4), ‘commitment’ (Chapter 5), public ‘exposure’ (Chapter 6) and final ‘resolution’ of their cases (Chapter 7). These five chapters are framed around key elements of the autobiographical narratives of four of the five athletes published after their detection.

The exception is Armstrong, who has yet to produce an exculpatory autobiography, but has received extensive global media coverage documenting his rise and downfall, his constant attempts to neutralise his activities through his widely publicised charitable cancer foundation ‘Livestrong’, and his subsequent public admission to Oprah Winfrey that his attempts to ‘control the narrative’ were part of a deliberate strategy to evade detection during his lengthy cycling career. Consequently, Armstrong’s ‘struggles against stigmatisation’ continue to endure ‘in real-time upon the public stage’ (p 78), whereas Millar, Hamilton and Chambers have received some redemption by either re-admission to professional competition or becoming advocates for ‘clean sport’ (p 77). Although Hamilton and Millar both faced internal disciplinary bans and criminal investigation, which are alluded to in this study, Jones stands out as the most prominent ‘fallen star’ (p 78), being the only female, a Black woman and the only athlete able to reveal the ‘pains of imprisonment’ (p 67, citing Sykes 1958) due to ‘her “one mistake”’.

Framing narratives of deviance

Yar establishes the theoretical and empirical legitimacy for using contemporary autobiographical celebrity and sports narratives ‘as a source of criminological data’ (p 12) by referring to the landmark Chicago School study The Jack Roller: A Delinquent Boy’s Own Story (Shaw 1930, 1966). Regrettably, space constraints prevent elaboration of the implications of this study in revealing profound deficits in the police policy of returning young vagrants to the purported safety of their family homes, and the impact this had on amplifying the criminal careers of children as young as the age of eight in light of the broader quantitative backdrop of the Chicago School’s concentric zone theory. Rather, Yar documents a neat progression of criminological and sociological autobiographical research that reveals how ‘narrative strategy’ is used by ‘the story-teller ... to account for themselves in the face of a public audience rendered sceptical and hostile’ (p 13). Goffman’s insights into the use of narratives as a form of ‘impression management’ (p 14) are central to Yar’s thesis in examining the progressive stages that unfold from the celebrity athletes’ childhoods, their entry into the professional athletic community, the attainment of elite sporting status and how they negotiate public scandal through their own words.

Chapter 2 builds the impression management thesis by describing the strategic dramaturgical and performative codes of first-person narratives that ‘encourage others to see us as we wish to be seen’ (p 18, emphasis in original). This argument is framed within the broader context of contemporary print and multimedia forms of production that characterise much of Yar’s previous work into contemporary cinematic and celebrity culture (see, for example, Tzanelli, Yar and O‘Brien 2005). Pertinently, as with many other celebrities, elite athletes also convey selective public self-images ‘with which they wish to be identified’ (p 20), often through preferred sponsorship arrangements or:

carefully prepared public performances that are strategically used to convey the desired character — these include interviews with journalists, press conferences, public appearances, photo opportunities, as well as use of new media tools such as social networking and micro-blogging sites like Twitter and Facebook (p 19).

How these processes intersect with the negotiation of public stigma once any ‘backstage’ efforts to conceal deviant behaviour are publicly revealed informs the remainder of the theoretical section. The necessary frames of reference for each stage of narrative self-presentation in the remaining chapters describe how fallen athletes negotiate public shame through disassociation, the highly stage-managed ‘para-confession’ (p 25) and other retrospective techniques of neutralisation (pp 26–30). Here, two particularly salient points emerge. The first involves the role of sport in four of the five case studies as an important sanctuary from broken family lives. Armstrong’s story is the most tragic of the five: ‘a missing father, a brave mother, poverty and hardship’ and an abusive step-father (pp 37–8). The second involves the common progression of retrospective neutralisations throughout the elite athlete’s career to the point of personal redemption and reintegration into sporting competition, except in the cases of Jones and Armstrong. While exposure to ‘harsh treatment by criminal justice authorities’ (p 66) is largely confined to descriptions of ‘the privations and humiliations’ experienced by Jones while in prison, it is clear that the combination of public shaming and the punishment of professional exile have enormous personal impacts on all of Yar’s subjects. These themes are interlaced with astute insights on the significance of race and other neutralisations within the narratives that reorient ‘discussion towards the alleged failings of others (the “hyenas”, “solves”, “trolls” and “hypocrites”)’ (p 68) as a key method of constructing a new social identity to achieve both personal and public redemption (p 73).

Conclusion

On the eve of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, Australian discus and shot-put champion Werner Reiterer revealed his own story of systematic doping. This included revelations of the ‘perpetual wink-and-a-tip-of-the-hat approach’ of national anti-doping authorities in covering up illicit doping by successful elite athletes (Reiterer 2000:143), and considerable public backlash as Reiterer disclosed he had ‘no regrets’ in directly attributing responsibility to ‘the people most responsible for shaping the sporting environment’ (2000:282). Crime, Deviance and Doping alludes to these broader structural issues at a time when the demands of regulating sporting integrity are becoming increasingly stringent and more amenable to criminological influence. Majid Yar reinforces the validity of storytelling as an important mode of empirical investigation. As such, his theoretical insights offer an extremely valuable template for understanding the criminological significance of sport, celebrity and popular culture that is of immense use to both experienced and new criminological researchers.

References

Australian Crime Commission (‘ACC’) (2013) Organised Crime and Drugs in Sport: New Generation Performance and Image Enhancing Drugs and Organised Criminal Involvement in their Use in Professional Sport <https://www.crimecommission.gov.au/sites/default/files/organised-crime-and-drugs-in-sports-feb2013.pdf>

Bricknell S (2015) ‘Corruption in Australian Sport’, Trends and Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice, No 490, Australian Institute of Criminology

Carroll R (2013) ‘Lance Armstrong Admits Doping in Oprah Winfrey Interview’, The Guardian (online), 13 January 2013 <http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2013/jan/18/lance-armstrong-admits-doping-oprah-winfrey>

Mewett P and Perry J (1997) ‘A Sporting Chance? The “Dark Horse Strategy” and Winning in Professional Running’, Sociology of Sport Journal 14(2), 121–42

Mitten MJ and Opie H (2012) ‘“Sports Law”: Implications for the Development of International, Comparative, and National Law and Global Dispute Resolution’ in RCR Siekmann and J Soek (eds),

Lex Sportiva: What is Sports Law?, Springer/Asser Press, 173–222

Reiterer R (2000) Positive: An Australian Olympian Reveals the Inside Story of Drugs and Sport, Pan Macmillan Australia

Shaw C (1930, 1966) The Jack-Roller: A Delinquent Boy’s Own Story, University of Chicago Press

Tzanelli R, Yar M and O’Brien M (2005) ‘“Con Me If You Can”: Exploring Crime in the American Cinematic Imagination’, Theoretical Criminology 9(1), 97–117

Warren I, Palmer D and Whelan C (2014) ‘Surveillance, Governance and Professional Sport’, Surveillance and Society 11(4), 439–53

Warren I and Zurawski N (2014) ‘Editorial: Surveillance and Sport’, Surveillance and Society 11(4), 354–9

Young K (2012) Sport, Violence and Society, Routledge


[*] Senior Lecturer in Criminology, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University, Waurn Ponds, Locked Bag 20000, Geelong Vic 3200, Australia. Email: ian.warren@deakin.edu.au.


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