Energy, enhancement and theorising the limit

Sports science conceptualises the body as a bounded individual system of inputs and outputs that can be quantified and understood in the laboratory. In contrast, for Ethiopian long-distance runners, energy is a transbodily substance that is subject to give and take with the environment and with others. It is also conceived of as limited, which means that it is deeply implicated in the way in which people think about relational ethics.

This paper builds upon previous work to explore how these understandings of sporting morality and fairness relate to global attempts either to regulate the use of performance enhancing substances or, more recently, to allow the use of pharmaceuticals and technological aids in sport. In doing so it asks what is at stake in the defining and pushing of limits.

Speaker biography

Michael Crawley is a social anthropologist researching endurance, performance enhancement and self-tracking technology. In 2022 he won the Margaret Mead Award for his book on Ethiopian running, ‘Out of Thin Air: Running Wisdom and Magic from Above the Clouds in Ethiopia’ (Bloomsbury, 2020)

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