HumEnBody · Responding to the Trend of Human Enhancement Drugs: the Case of Drug-Free Bodybuilding Culture in European Context

Responding to the Trend of Human Enhancement Drugs: the Case of Drug-Free Bodybuilding Culture in European Context

The research project set out to explore the previously uncharted culture of ‘natural’ (i.e. drug-free) bodybuilding. ‘Natural’ bodybuilding has been emerging in different parts of the world as a response to a dominant, pharmacologically-enhanced model of building bodies that has thus far monopolised lay and scientific attention and debate. Although drug-free practice can be viewed as the ‘default’ position in bodybuilding's modern trajectory which began in the 1850s, it is only in the last four decades that it has been articulated as an integrated ‘alternative’. This is precisely at a historical juncture where dominant bodybuilding culture and the wider paradigm of pharmacologically-enabled human enhancement it represents have both exploded and come under increased scrutiny. The aim of the work has been to investigate the emergence and development of ‘natural’ bodybuilding. The key contexts for this investigation have been a) a globalised gym/fitness culture where growing numbers of people from different ages, genders, class, cultural and ethnic backgrounds get exposed to training and diet systems, vocabularies and body projects originating in bodybuilding; b) the use of image- and performance- enhancing drugs, particularly its spread outside the confines of elite sport and into the wider world of recreational exercise and the ensuing challenges to public health; and c) the wider phenomenon of human enhancement, and more specifically the trend towards enhancing human capabilities and attributes through pharmacological means that challenges our ideas of the ‘natural’ body. Focusing on Europe as a significant and intriguing site in an emerging global mosaic of body cultures, the research’s objective was to trace and understand how those involved in ‘natural’ bodybuilding act on their bodies and how they define, experience and organize their individual and communal undertakings. In an attempt to sketch a representative and comparative picture, ‘natural’ bodybuilding culture was examined in different cities in France, the UK and Greece. These were approached as exploratory case studies marked by their own developments in the specific area of bodybuilding and gym/fitness culture as well as by wider and often transnational social and cultural processes. The research involved visits and participant observation in gyms and ‘natural’ bodybuilding events, in-depth interviews with 50 research participants, and online/social media research.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз