Sport and Surveillance Technologies

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this chapter is to promote the importance, utility and necessity of applying a sociocultural lens to the analysis of the normalized appropriation of surveillance technologies and wearables across sports settings.

Approach

The chapter synthesizes existing literature that has embraced a sociocultural lens to examine the implications of the increasingly normalized adoption of surveillance technologies in sport settings. In doing so we hope to provoke discussion regarding the contemporary effects of technologies in order that they may be better understood by not only sports scholars but those who operate within sport. To achieve this aim, we provide an exemplar of how Michel Foucault's concepts have been a useful heuristic for this endeavour.

Findings

Within the highly commercialized and spectacularized domain of corporate sport, the performing athletic body has become a commodity of vital importance. Correspondingly, sports practitioners across the globe have rallied to devise innovative ways to train, protect and improve athletes. As this chapter details, one of the main ways in which this project has occurred is through the increased appropriation of wearable (and increasingly invasive) surveillance technologies. A major finding from existing literature is that surveillance technologies can contribute to the unproblematized production of compliant athletic commodities in sports settings. Moreover, that this can have significant limiting outcomes for athletes' development and well-being and coaches' practices.

Research limitations/implications (if applicable)

The chapter argues for three future ‘touchstone’ areas of study: Surveillance technologies and athlete retirement, unintended consequences of more technology and resisting the regulatory intentions of behavioural nudges.

Originality/value

This chapter provides one of the first summaries of the socioculturally informed research that has examined the implications of the increasingly normalized presence of surveillance technologies across sports settings. In doing so, it also acts as one of the first resources designed to help those who coach and develop athletes to reflect upon the significant dangers and limiting outcomes that can be associated with the unconsidered deployment of surveillance technology.

Citation

Jones, L., Konoval, T. and Toner, J. (2022), "Sport and Surveillance Technologies", Sanderson, J. (Ed.) Sport, Social Media, and Digital Technology (Research in the Sociology of Sport, Vol. 15), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 165-183. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1476-285420220000015020