Exploring the Missing Link Between the Concussion “Crisis” and Labor Politics in Professional Sports

Brayton, Sean; Helstein, Michelle T.; Ramsey, Mike W.; Rickards, Nicholas

doi:10.1177/2167479517740342

Cited by 20 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Grano further argues that the social values and conceptions of risk embedded within brain banking are unlikely to do justice to classed and raced aspects of risk-based decision making that are key to understanding the concussion crisis. Others (e.g., Brayton et al, 2019;Henne and Ventresca, 2019;Martin and McMillan, 2020) have likewise identified reductionist and/or neoliberal logics underpinning reporting into the concussion crisis; a conclusion that chimes with existing research suggesting that neuroscientific findings frequently perpetuate rather than challenge existing understandings of society (O'Connor et al, 2012;O'Connor and Joffe, 2013). These conclusions regarding the underpinning logics of concussion science and journalism are complementary to, and yet notably distinct from, those that consider overt conflicts of interest.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

“Learning to Listen to Them and Ask the Right Questions.” Bennet Omalu, Scientific Objectivities, and the Witnessing of a Concussion Crisis

Hollin

2021

Front. Sports Act. Living

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The death of American Football player Mike Webster has become foundational to narratives of sport's twenty-first century concussion crisis. Bennet Omalu, the neuropathologist who conducted Webster's autopsy and subsequently diagnosed Webster with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), has, likewise, become a central figure in the concussion crisis. Indeed, it is frequently argued that there is something about Omalu in particular that made it possible for him to “witness” CTE when the disease entity had hitherto remained invisible to a great many medics and scientists. In this article, and drawing upon auto/biographies, I consider Omalu's self-described mode of scientific witnessing which purportedly allowed him to (re)discover CTE. I find Omalu's described objectivity to be shaped by three factors: First, the importance of “trained judgment” within which Omalu's scientific training is emphasized. Second, the infusion of religiosity within scientific practice. Third, a self-described position as an “outsider” to both football and American culture. Throughout this analysis, I pay attention not only to the ways in which Omalu's narratives depart from conventional depictions of scientific objectivity; I also note the similarities with particular bodies of social scientific work, most notably within a feminist “turn to care” in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and related standpoint epistemologies. Following these analyses, I argue that, first, Omalu's writing affords the dead a “response-ability” that is often absent within analyses of the concussion crisis and, second, that a focus upon diverse forms of objectivity, such as those described in Omalu's work, complements existing work into concussion science that has foregrounded scientific conflict of interest.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

“Learning to Listen to Them and Ask the Right Questions.” Bennet Omalu, Scientific Objectivities, and the Witnessing of a Concussion Crisis

Hollin

2021

Front. Sports Act. Living

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“…As others (e.g. Brayton et al., 2019) have observed, discourses regarding injury—specifically concussions—tend to disregard the exploitation of athlete laborers. Individual players make an informed choice to accept the risk of bodily injury in exchange for extreme wealth, the thinking goes.…”

Section: Penality In Professional Hockeymentioning

confidence: 94%

“…Individual players make an informed choice to accept the risk of bodily injury in exchange for extreme wealth, the thinking goes. Framing athletes as “ultrarich” knowing risk-takers distances them from regular fans who have trouble recognizing them as exploited workers and consequently obscures the broader “organizing structure” of the sporting world (Brayton et al., 2019: 125, 126; Kalman-Lamb, 2018). For Kalman-Lamb (2018: 5), unsafe and unhealthy working conditions are “inherent” attributes of athletic labor.…”

Section: Penality In Professional Hockeymentioning

confidence: 99%

“Discipline that hurts”: Punitive logics and governance in sport

Kennedy

Silva

2020

Punishment & Society

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In this paper, we undertake a case study of the National Hockey League’s supplementary discipline regime to reflect on the ways in which discourses about social harm are configured, taken up and used in the sporting landscape and how they reflect and reify narrow understandings of crime and punishment. We find that the hockey world employs predictable crime and justice metaphors when discussing on-ice violence and suggest this breeds fear and legitimates governance strategies. The National Hockey League’s supplemental discipline process itself—much like penality away from the rink—is characterized by multiple, sometimes contradictory, objectives. Notably, the league responsibilizes players, long endorsing or accepting vigilantism, refusing to enact structural changes, and compelling players themselves to create a safe workplace. This regime has contributed to financial struggles, chronic physical and mental health issues, and the early deaths of a host of former players.

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“…Shearer's defence of the status quo on the grounds that he did not want to deprive people of the joy of playing soccer, further emphasized personal choice over structural solutions (note that themes of individual culpability are also evident in North American representations, e.g. Brayton et al, 2019).…”

Section: Dementia: Treatment Prevention and Neoliberalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soccer, CTE, and the Cultural Representation of Dementia

Malcolm

2021

Sociology of Sport Journal

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This article deploys a qualitative media content analysis to examine discourses linking sport, head injury, and longer term neurocognitive decline. It draws on a seminal British television documentary and associated print media coverage to demonstrate that the representation of sport-related brain injury is intricately connected to both conceptions of risk in sport and a wider social response to aging and dementia. The article augments existing North American analyses to provide the first cross-cultural comparison of this phenomenon and, in doing so, illustrates how the social prominence of cultural representations of sport-related brain injury relates in part to the distinct characteristics of the sport-related phenomenon, which extend and amplify both the broader cultural crisis of concussion in sport and existing representations of dementia. The study is therefore important because it provides a unique perspective on both a key contemporary sporting issue and this global health concern.

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Exploring the Missing Link Between the Concussion “Crisis” and Labor Politics in Professional Sports

Cited by 20 publications

References 14 publications

“Learning to Listen to Them and Ask the Right Questions.” Bennet Omalu, Scientific Objectivities, and the Witnessing of a Concussion Crisis

“Learning to Listen to Them and Ask the Right Questions.” Bennet Omalu, Scientific Objectivities, and the Witnessing of a Concussion Crisis

“Discipline that hurts”: Punitive logics and governance in sport

Soccer, CTE, and the Cultural Representation of Dementia

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