ABSTRACT
This book examines sports medicine from a variety of social scientific perspectives. Although the dominant approach in this volume is sociology, being the home discipline of both editors and the majority of contributors, reflective of the growth of interand multidisciplinary research the collection also includes contributions from historians, policy analysts, philosophers and ethicists, social psychologists and those whose disciplinary influences are more eclectic. Our aim in producing this collection is to consolidate recent advances in this area of study in order to establish a basis for future development. This book is partly an attempt to undergo a “stocktaking” process, but in itself (we hope) has acted, and will in future act, as a stimulus to the field. We see this as a long overdue development and one that has the potential to have a significant impact on the various sport-related subdisciplines. Moreover, by delineating the specificities of sport as a context and focus for medicine, we believe this area has the potential to inform ongoing debates within broader social scientific studies of medicine. A central aim of this introduction, therefore, is to look at the roots of the social scientific investigation of sports medicine and discuss the field’s future prospects. Prior to doing this, however, we wish to provide some conceptual clarity by interrogating “sports medicine” as a concept.
