A Bourdieusian Approach to Pain Management and Health in Professional Cricket

Title: A Bourdieusian Approach to Pain Management and Health in Professional Cricket
Creator: Read, Daniel; Thomas, Ivan; Smith, Aaron C. T.; Skinner, James
Relation: Sociology of Sport Journal Vol. 41, Issue 3, p. 267-276
Publisher Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1123/ssj.2023-0042
Publisher: Human Kinetics
Resource Type: journal article
Date: 2024
Description: Painkiller (mis)use in sport presents a range of potential health risks to athletes (e.g., injury exacerbation). There is a lack of qualitative data examining the sociological genesis of variations in attitudes toward painkiller use. Focusing on the concept of physical capital, this article explores how attitudes toward painkiller use among professional cricket players in England are socialized by their workplace. Attitudes toward painkiller (mis)use stem from field-level structures that foster employment vulnerability, ensuring physical capital is precarious and legitimating painkiller (mis)use as a method of protecting economic opportunities with the added benefit of accruing symbolic capital by demonstrating toughness. Based on the findings, this article advocates for a sociologically informed harm-reduction approach to pain management in elite sport.
Subject: athlete welfare; harm reduction; painkillers; physical capital
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1510517
Identifier: uon:56422
Identifier: ISSN:0741-1235
Language: eng
Reviewed