ABSTRACT
Bodybuilding is a continuum, ranging from the mundane to the otherworldly. Combining archival research, interviews, participant observation, and discourse analysis, this work builds on previous research to present a critical mapping of bodybuilding's trajectory. Global bodybuilding media have radically changed the dynamics of research during the years of doing the project. Muscle magazines have also had an important diachronic function in operating and controlling the bodybuilding industry. Interviewing culture insiders was employed as a method for collecting informed accounts of the historical development, current state and direction of dominant bodybuilding culture, as well as how this edifice practically works. Many of the encounters, and especially the more candid ones, unveiled to the author the various antagonisms amongst players in the culture and how words, images, and people are mobilized to produce a face and history of bodybuilding in particular ways. The chapter also provides an outline of this book.
