Dissertation Research : Knowledge in Motion: Science and Elite Sport in a Global Context

这项科学、工程和技术社会研究的科学与社会论文改进基金将帮助资助精英体育科学的历史和民族志研究。精英在这里是指专业的或世界级的。每个世界冠军运动员的背后都有许多科学家在研究他或她的表现。这些科学家提供了关于人体如何工作的知识，关于什么是自然的身体，什么是增强的身体，以及关于人类表现的决定因素。运动科学家把优秀运动员带到他们的实验室，而他们的实验室又把运动员带到他们的实验室。他们创造实验条件，以产生关于人类表现极限和潜力的知识。这篇论文追踪了运动科学的兴起（大约从20世纪20年代到现在），以及今天运动科学流动的全球网络。NSF论文改进基金将用于支持运动科学知识的日常生产研究。实地考察将在一位世界知名运动科学家的实验室和东非跑步科学国际中心的实验室和实地进行。由于运动科学是一个跨国的专家网络，这项研究本身是多地点的，位于南非、肯尼亚和苏格兰。参与者观察、对行为的直接系统观察和半结构化访谈有三个具体目的：1)记录影响人类表现科学实验发展和实施的因素；2)制定一份构成运动科学研究的具体实践或技术清单；3)记录研究人员与人类受试者之间的互动和交流。这项研究的智力价值在于它有助于理解人文科学的日常实践。这项研究考虑了在多大程度上，从研究非人类对象的科学人种学研究中获得的见解可以应用于研究以人类为主题的科学。随着时间的推移，在实验室和精英运动员训练营中进行的实验将被记录下来，这些发现将揭示科学家和受试者、观察和具体化知识的角色相互作用和重叠的方式。这项研究更广泛的影响在于，它涉及了一个重要的、正在发展的科学领域。随着世界锦标赛将全球文化带入世界各地的客厅、酒吧和茶馆，它们也带来了历史上与精英体育并行发展的科学。然而，运动科学的发展、实践和影响还没有得到很好的理解。这篇论文将描述研究人员如何决定对人类表现的哪些方面给予特权，关于影响他们工作的物质和人类偶然性，以及运动科学在更广泛的科学和运动专业知识网络中的地位。该研究将阐明精英体育的全球背景如何影响实验实践，以及科学实践如何在精英体育的全球背景下循环。

This Science and Society Dissertation Improvement Grant in the Social Studies of Science, Engineering, and Technology will help fund a historical and ethnographic study of the science of elite sport. Elite in this case means professional or world-class. Behind every world champion athlete are scores of scientists studying his or her performance. These scientists produce knowledge about how human bodies work, about what bodies are natural versus performance-enhanced, and about the determinants of human performance. Exercise scientists bring elite athletes to their laboratories--and their labs to the athletes. They create the experimental conditions to produce knowledge about the limits and potential of human performance. The dissertation tracks the rise of exercise science (from about the 1920's to present) and the global networks through which exercise science flows today. NSF dissertation improvement funds will be used to support the study of the daily production of knowledge in exercise science. Fieldwork will take place at the laboratory of a world-renowned exercise scientist and at the laboratory and field site of the International Center for East African Running Science. Because exercise science is a transnational network of expertise, the study is itself multi-sited, located in South Africa, Kenya, and Scotland. Participant-observation, direct systematic observation of behavior, and semi-structured interviews address three specific aims: 1) to document factors that affect the development and enactment of science experiments on human performance, 2) to develop a list of specific practices or techniques of knowing that constitute exercise science research, and 3) to document interactions and communications between researchers and human subjects. The intellectual merit of this study is that it contributes to understanding the everyday practices of human sciences. This study considers the extent to which the insights developed from the ethnographic study of sciences that address non-human objects can be applied to the study of a science in which the subjects are human beings. Documenting experiments as they unfold over time in both the laboratories and at elite athlete training camps, findings will suggest ways in which the roles of scientist and subject, of observation and embodied knowledge, interact and overlap. The broader impact of the research is that it engages with an important and growing scientific field. As world championship competitions bring global culture into living rooms, bars, and tea shops around the world, so, too, do they bring the science that has developed historically in parallel with elite sport. Yet the development, practice, and impact of exercise science are not well understood. The dissertation will describe how researchers decide upon which aspects of human performance to privilege, on the material and human contingencies that inform their work, and on the position of exercise science within a broader network of scientific and athletic expertise. The research will illuminate how the global context of elite sport affects experimental practice and how scientific practices circulate in the global context of elite sport.