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

科学，工程和技术的社会研究中的科学与社会论文改进补助金将有助于资助精英体育科学的历史和人种学研究。精英在这里意味着专业或世界级。每一位世界冠军运动员的背后都有大量的科学家在研究他或她的表现。这些科学家产生了关于人体如何工作的知识，关于什么样的身体是自然的与性能增强的，以及关于人类性能的决定因素。运动科学家把精英运动员带到他们的实验室--他们的实验室也给运动员。他们创造实验条件，以产生关于人类表现的极限和潜力的知识。论文跟踪运动科学的兴起（从20世纪20年代到现在）和运动科学今天流动的全球网络。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现场进行。由于运动科学是一个跨国的专业知识网络，这项研究本身是多地点的，位于南非，肯尼亚和苏格兰。直接观察、直接系统观察行为和半结构化访谈有三个具体目标：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沟通。这项研究的智力价值在于它有助于理解人类科学的日常实践。本研究认为，在何种程度上的见解，从民族志研究的科学，解决非人类的对象可以应用到一个科学的研究，其中的主题是人类。随着时间的推移，在实验室和精英运动员训练营中展开的实验记录，研究结果将表明科学家和主题，观察和体现知识的角色相互作用和重叠的方式。这项研究的更广泛影响在于它涉及一个重要且不断发展的科学领域。正如世界锦标赛将全球文化带入世界各地的起居室、酒吧和茶店一样，它们也将历史上与精英体育并行发展的科学带入世界各地。然而，运动科学的发展，实践和影响还没有得到很好的理解。本论文将描述研究人员如何决定哪些方面的人类表现的特权，对材料和人类的突发事件，通知他们的工作，并在更广泛的网络中的科学和体育专业知识的运动科学的位置。这项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.