ABSTRACT

In several publications since the early 1990s, Howard L. Nixon II has made a major contribution to our understanding of the sociology of risk, pain and injury in sport. 1 Central to Nixon’s work is his concept of “sportsnets,” by which he refers to the webs of interaction between members of social networks in sport-related settings. Nixon argues that the structural characteristics of sportsnets—which he described as a “conspiratorial alliance” of coaches, administrators and sports physicians—expose athletes to “biased social support” that can influence and impose messages that foster the acceptance by athletes of risk, pain and injury and insulate them from, and inhibit them from seeking, medical care from outside the sport system. Walk has suggested that one implication of Nixon’s work is that “medicine is practiced differently, more competently, and/or more ethically in nonsports contexts.” 2 Young had earlier raised similar questions when he suggested that sports workplaces are the sites not just of medical mastery, but also of “extraordinary medical neglect.” 3 These comments represent the starting point for this chapter, the central object of which is to consider whether there are aspects of the practice of sports medicine that might be considered as something less than what Walk calls “proper medical care.” More specifically, the chapter sets out to examine whether the network of relationships in which sports medicine practitioners are involved limits their professional autonomy and constrains them to make medical compromises that their colleagues in other branches of medicine are less constrained to make.