ABSTRACT
Focusing upon deep sea divers’ normalisation of risk, Hunt (1995: 441) states that ‘normal risk’ entails ‘practices that specific persons on specific occasions formulate as necessary, appropriate, reasonable or understandable’. Within the demonised bodybuilding subculture, self-identified bodybuilders (and other affiliative members) whom I talked with and observed in daily life, constru0cted instrumental drug use as a legitimate means for attaining a subculturally prescribed goal. To be sure, personal usage may be limited or rejected for various reasons; for example, gendered discourses and the invocation of the ‘natural’ constrain female bodybuilding practices. Also, concerns about being discredited outside of the subculturemay be topically relevant resulting inbodybuilders disavowing what nonmembers (and ‘marginal members’ such as weight trainers) consider ‘unacceptable’ risk-inducing behaviour. Although qualified, the pro-drug attitudes reported above were expressed by a range of bodybuilders during fieldwork and depth interviews. These shared understandings, acquired by participants within the bodybuilding habitus, contribute to the sustainability of chemical bodybuilding as an ongoing practical accomplishment.
