Ted M. Butryn

It’s Not About The Book A Cyborg Counternarrative of Lance Armstrong

In his autobiography, It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life, Lance Armstrong claimed that his identity as a human being is not defined simply in terms of his skill at racing a bicycle. Armstrong’s articulation of multiple, competing identifications is consistent with a postmodern notion of fractured, incomplete identity. However, following Butler, identity can be seen as contested, negotiated, and often hegemonic. Drawing from the emerging field of cyborgology, and the work of Birrell and McDonald, the authors construct a parallel cyborg “counternarrative” alongside the popular Armstrong story. By interrogating Armstrong’s story through the lens of cyborg theory, the authors will explore and articulate alternative meanings/readings of Armstrong’s narrative of self as represented in his book and, finally, suggest that Armstrong’s story can be read as an exemplar of the postmodern cyborg sporting hero.

Traversing the Matrix Cyborg Athletes, Technology, and the Environment

Despite the growing body of sport studies literature engaging cyborg theory, and notwithstanding the significant amount of work within sport sociology interrogating sport and space, few scholars have attempted to situate the lived experiences of cyborg athletes both within the wide range of indoor, often more technologized settings, and outdoors in what have been considered “wilderness” environments. Furthermore, little work has examined the relationship between sport identities, sporting environments, and environmental politics. Therefore, this study qualitatively examined the lived sporting experiences of 12 competitive athletes who trained and competed both indoors and outdoors while using an array of sporting technologies. Results showed that athletes negotiated the boundaries between human, technology, and nature in complex, often contradictory ways, and made moderate connections between their cyborg identities and their impact on the environment.

A focus group analysis of the US and Canadian female triathletes' knowledge of doping

In the past five years, triathlon has been identified in the World Anti-Doping Agencys (WADA) annual doping summary as being among the top five sports returning ‘adverse analytical findings’ or positive doping results. The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the sources of knowledge regarding doping practices and anti-doping efforts in Canadian and American professional female triathletes. The secondary purpose of this study was to develop suggestions that may enhance the efficacy of anti-doping education programmes and ultimately the larger global anti-doping movement. The first phase of this WADA-sponsored Social Science initiative project consisted of two six-member focus groups that included younger pro-triathletes at the beginning of their international career from both the USA and Canada. Six Canadian and six US female triathletes participated in separate focus group sessions lasting approximately 1.5 hours in addition to individual semi-structured follow-up interviews. Analysis of the data yielded four interconnected thematic categories, including: (1) meanings of doping to participants; (2) general knowledge of doping and anti-doping practices; (3) suggestions for anti-doping education; and (4) contrasts between American and Canada assessment of anti-doping issues.

Re)examining whiteness in sport psychology through autonarrative excavation.

Abstract After an introductory of the recent work in whiteness studies, in this paper, I revisit the issue of whiteness in sport psychology and critique my earlier, overly optimistic, assessment of future confrontations with white racial identity and privilege in the field. In addition to theoretical and empirical work in critical race studies and whiteness studies and its application to sport contexts, I draw from the recent work within and outside of sport psychology on autoethnography and present several brief autoethnographic vignettes that illustrate moments of tension in my own negotiation of issues related to whiteness and privilege as an early career academic teaching and doing research in sport psychology and sport sociology. Following the work of Smith and Sparkes (2009), I attempt to write in varying styles and voices to engage the reader on multiple levels. I conclude with an attempt to tie these narratives to larger issues of pedagogy and possibilities as they relate to an active, progressive, anti‐racist mode of addressing whiteness and sport psychology

Dancing with quantitoids: a brief and benevolent commentary on the special issue of QRSEH

In this brief commentary on the excellent contributions to this special of Qualitative Research in Sport, Health and Exercise, I attempt to draw out several major themes that ran through many of the articles, and address a few other points that stood out in my readings of the submissions. After a short introduction of my own history with respect to becoming a (predominately) qualitative researcher, I discuss issues related to the philosophy of knowledge and research paradigms in qualitative work. I then address to the issue of the politics of knowledge in qualitative research, and call on scholars to move towards more progressive ways of conducting qualitative research that reflect the current ways of thinking about qualitative work. Next, I provide a couple of notes regarding the applications of qualitative research, as well as the need to better educate ourselves and our students on the latest qualitative approaches. I end with a few specific comments on Jeffery Martin’s challenging and insightful article, and end with a point about qualitative research in an era of new media and abbreviated modes of communication.