Abstract
In 2016, the Olympic Movement had to face a major crisis of state sponsored doping in Russia. This crisis raised suspicions about the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the World Anti-doping Agency’s (WADA) efficiency and integrity.
This article focuses on the Russian doping case, as it offers rich and diverse empirical material that helps understand the social context of the production and circulation of performance. To this end, we articulate Bourdieu’s fields theory and Abbott’s linked ecologies as relevant models to analyse and discuss our case study and its implications. We used newspaper articles on the Russian crisis, a content analysis of official WADA and IOC publications, and field notes taken during informal talks with anti-doping stakeholders.
In this article, it is argued that IOC and WADA’s social performance was ineffective for three reasons. First, the crisis revealed the gap between the promises of anti-doping and the widespread doping in Russia. Second, it demonstrated the extent to which the Russian crisis fragilised the binding role of the sport doxa, reinforced the role of anti-doping stakeholders’ specific ecologies and belittled cooperation between them to display a shared meaning of the situation. Third, embedded in a complex web of interactions and interdependencies with other actors, WADA and the IOC were unable to perform a convincing ‘social performance’ and both were judged to be ineffective and untrustworthy. The results of the study show (1) the importance of the diachronic dimension of social performance; (2) the relevance of relying on Bourdieu’s field theory to understand the central role of temporality in the production of meanings; (3) the usefulness of Abbott’s perspective to understand that producers do not control the meanings and understand how they were reframed; (4) the relative autonomy of the meanings associated with social performance.
The widespread doping violations in Russia during the 2010s represent one of the biggest doping scandals in sport (Denham, 2019; Duval, 2017), and it has significantly contributed to 43 Olympic medals being stripped from Russian athletes to date. In addition, in 2019, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) banned Russia from all major sporting events for four years. This crisis ranges from narrow interactions to broad geopolitical drama. Furthermore, with intensive media attention, it highlighted disillusions with Russia and focused the spotlight on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and WADA. Their decisions and expected commitment to fight against doping were exposed and scrutinised by a large international audience that raised intense criticism on anti-doping efficiency and the sincerity of the IOC and WADA’s commitments.
Assessment of the effectiveness of the fight against doping is often based on testing public efficiency and, above all, on the number of athletes identified as ‘cheaters’. However, we argue that the IOC and WADA’s actions during the crisis should be observed as a ‘social performance’ (Alexander, 2004). The IOC and WADA were assessed regarding their supposed misbehaviour or even collusion with and/or tolerance of the ‘cheaters’ (i.e. Russia), and both have faced difficulties convincing the audience. Addressing anti-doping in its dramaturgical dimensions, in context and over time, allows us to understand how stakeholders make promises, display the meaning of their situation, and try to convince the audience of their commitment to anti-doping.
This article focuses on the Russian doping case because it offers rich and diverse empirical material that aids in understanding the social context of the production and circulation of performance. To this end, we articulate Bourdieu’s field theory and Abbott’s linked ecologies as relevant models to analyse and discuss our case study and its implications. Anti-doping is, therefore, considered as a key component of a doxa – identified as a symbolic production embedded in the sporting field (Bourdieu, 1993) – whose meaning is mediated by actors from linked ecologies (Abbott, 2005b), and which circulates in other social spaces in which critics ‘provide running evaluations of performances’ (Alexander, 2011: 3). This theoretical position is innovative because it is based on different sociological traditions. Further, combining these two approaches, which are identified as relevant to highlighting the importance of time and context to understanding social phenomena (Liu and Emirbayer, 2016), can also be used to decipher some social conditions of the effectiveness of social performances.
Framework to Encompass the Complexity of Anti-Doping
Relevant Dramaturgic Analysis of Anti-Doping
WADA was informed in 2010 that doping was widespread in Russia (Figure 1). However, it was not in a position to react accordingly and the scandal was instead made public through a documentary by the journalist Hajo Seppelt, which was broadcast in December 2014 by the German television channel Das Erste, entitled The Doping Secret: How Russia Creates its Champions. It uncovered alleged Russian state involvement in systematic doping, describing it as ‘East-German style’. Beyond the facts, the documentary may be seen as evidence of anti-doping and sports governing bodies’ incapacity to curb doping.
The Russian state sponsored doping crisis: a summarised timeline.
Trust in anti-doping was already fragile prior to the Russian crisis because anti-doping organisations had failed to convince audiences that all ‘cheaters’ could be caught and punished. The initial optimism and promises of anti-doping, dampened by the proliferation of doping cases, gave way to more realistic expectations (Hanstad and Houlihan, 2015), and with the burden of past doping scandals, the legitimacy of the regulators was already weakened (Meier and Reinold, 2018; Pielke and Boye, 2019; Read et al., 2018).
In this context, the Russian doping crisis called into question sports organisations’ abilities to implement ‘efficient’ anti-doping programmes and thus to protect the value of sporting events. Indeed, doping harms the belief that rankings reflect teams and/or athletes’ ‘real’ value. This crisis was mainly analysed as evidence of the lack of efficiency in anti-doping policy. Several people in academia, the general public, and the media have argued that the Russian crisis illustrated the failure of anti-doping organisations and their incapacity to catch dopers. Evidence of such failure is supposedly revealed by the ‘dark number’ of doping – the difference between the number of Adverse Analytical Findings, which indicate the presence of a prohibited substance or method in a sample, and the ‘actual’ prevalence of doping, as assessed by other prevalence studies (Lentillon-Kaestner and Ohl, 2011; Sottas et al., 2011). Despite progress in organising the fight against doping (WADA and its Code, Athlete Biological Passport, anti-doping laboratories, National Anti-Doping Organisations [NADOs], compliance rules, etc.), the dominant perception was the low perceived legitimacy of and lack of trust in sports organisations responsible for anti-doping, including the IOC as the umbrella organisation (Chadwick, 2016).
However, analysis of effectiveness cannot be based on a purely objectivist view. For example, high levels of crime do not automatically lead to mistrust in the police and justice. An objectivist view narrows the analysis since it neglects the ‘objective limits of objectivism’ (Bourdieu, 1977: 1). The perception of efficiency also lies in how the meaning of the situation is displayed. One key idea, inspired by Goffman’s (1959) dramaturgical analysis, is that we perform roles to influence the impressions we make on others. This perspective is relevant to the analysis of anti-doping actors because they all try to display the meaning of the situation and to convince the audience that they have made good decisions. Actors frequently collaborate for ‘team presentation’ (Goffman, 1959); in particular, those working together engage in a ‘social drama’ to convince others that their actions are consistent (Hughes, 1976).
From a micro-sociological perspective, social structures and interactions often combine in a ‘loose coupling’ (Goffman, 1983), but the symbolic elements of performance can be conceptualised in a more macro-sociological way (Alexander, 2004). Alexander’s concept of ‘social performance’ moves beyond Goffman’s theatrical performance and Turner’s account of ‘social drama’. Turner’s social dramas are kinds of ‘fused rituals’ that highlight the communitas, accomplishing transformations and bonding actors through ‘shared meanings’ (Turner, 1982: 75). However, this concept does not address the ‘cultural performance’ in modern societies characterised by the complex social forms of organisations and the differentiation of cultural systems (Alexander et al., 2006). In our societies, accepting ‘ritual messages [is] more a matter of choice than obligation’ and ‘audiences have become defused from ritual productions’ (Alexander et al., 2006: 17). The empirical evidence collected on the Russian crisis offers an opportunity to better understand the contradictory meanings given to a certain event and how dramaturgies and social structures are interrelated.
Time matters in these processes (Abbott, 2001), and because actors’ performances are judged in their coherence over time, the anti-doping broken promises fragilised the ‘expressive coherence of reality that is dramatised by a performance’ (Goffman, 1959: 87) during not only specific interactions but all interactions. As we will highlight, the contradictions between the seminal promise of the ‘War on Doping’ (Alexander, 2014) and the repeated doping scandals, have weakened the social performance of anti-doping actors. As for other cases, not keeping promises risks never being trusted again (Junge, 2006). Further, the extent of the Russian crisis negatively affected the actors’ capacity to collaborate and weakened overall confidence in anti-doping.
The Sporting Field and the Anti-Doping Doxa
Focusing on sport as a field with its doxa (Bourdieu, 1993) is relevant to understanding the context in which anti-doping social performance is embedded. Belief in the value of sporting performance – expressed through the valuation of medals and rankings in prestigious sport events – is a key element of the doxa. Performance constitutes the main capital of the field, as a source of prestige and power over which actors compete (Bourdieu, 1989). Anti-doping is another central component of the doxa, voiced by common narratives on the value of an ‘authentic’ performance. As for the neoliberal doxa (Chopra, 2003), anti-doping became a kind of unquestionable orthodoxy embedded in the history of the sporting field. It expresses core values that symbolically bond together, at least publicly, the ‘Olympic family’. Although there are some struggles to regulate anti-doping, the foundations of the fight against doping are very rarely contested publicly within the field. Showing support to anti-doping rules is a condition for membership of the ‘Olympic family’; it is a key component of the ‘illusion that forms the prereflexive belief of the agents of the field’ (Hilgers and Mangez, 2014: 7). Therefore, adhesion to the doxa determines who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’, both symbolically and effectively (some Russian athletes were excluded from the 2016 Olympic Games). Those who stage their alignment with the doxa, and do not respect the anti-doping rules, are identified as cheaters. However, the relation to doping is ambivalent because doping is also a key resource to perform in sport and, consequently, to gain prestige and power, as long as doping remains unrevealed. Thus, staging one’s commitment to anti-doping is mandatory to conform to the sport doxa, but the line between the culture of performance, or ‘marginal gains’ (Harrell, 2015), and doping is sometimes blurred ( Fincoeur et al., 2020).
Consequently, control of the sport doxa, particularly for anti-doping, is important since it is related to the power and the symbolic order of the field and, accordingly, to the distribution of capital in the field. Due to the IOC’s history in sport, its recognition as the umbrella organisation of the International Sports Federation (IF), and its role in the redistribution of revenues of the Olympic Games (OG) to IF and National Olympic Committees (Chappelet, 2008), the IOC cumulates symbolic, economic, and political capital and occupies a powerful position in the field that allows it to have important control over the doxa.
The degree and type of autonomy of the sporting field varies over time and context. With WADA’s creation in 1999, the IOC lost part of its autonomy over control of the doxa because governments required important changes in anti-doping and remained involved in regulations. WADA took the lead on anti-doping regulations, in the name of the IOC and the governments. It had the legitimacy to shape and implement a strong anti-doping regulation that became a key part of the sporting field’s official doxa. Many sports organisations shifted, at least publicly, from a relative tolerance of doping to a role of guardians of the anti-doping orthodoxy.
Sport and its Linked Ecologies
Despite the existing struggles within the sporting field, the sport doxa (Bourdieu, 1978, 1986) tends to play the role of a centripetal force that binds stakeholders (athletes, clubs, media, sponsors, etc.). These stakeholders participate together in a social performance that celebrates sport, its main competitions, and the organisations in charge of it. Sport rituals are often effective performances in which ‘audiences identify with actors’ (Alexander, 2004: 527). However, this was not the case during the Russian crisis, where there was no ‘team presentation’ and fewer centripetal forces. Fields can be ‘vulnerable to elite or to popular sources of pressure within other fields’ (Krause, 2018: 10). The sporting field, like other fields of cultural productions (Krause, 2018), depends on the audience to value its products and, consequently, on media. The IOC also depends on politics because of the political support needed to host the OG, from which it receives the bulk of its income. Media and politics, on which we focus in this article, are often analysed as fields. However, in many cases, fields depend on specific contexts (Benson, 2005).
Bourdieu’s model is useful to explain the social conditions of performativity within a field; however, our observations on anti-doping show that it is less relevant for a broader scope. The interactions between the fields of sport, media, and politics are more complex at an international level. Of course, there are direct links: for example, the OG broadcast rights were valued at US$4.38 billion from 2014 to 2020 (Olympic Review, 2011: 80). However, as a global phenomenon (Maguire, 1999) that has growing international audiences that increasingly use social networking platforms, sport depends on a complex network of information distribution and on heterogeneous international audiences that scrutinise the consistency of the dramaturgies and spread critical evaluations. Consequently, the drama also involves actors that have loose relations with the sporting field and can be situated in linked ecologies. In addition, when the value of ‘sport performance’ is tarnished by doping scandals, the identification of the audience with the athletes and teams is fragilised. Instead of being ‘fused’ (Alexander, 2004) and allowing an identification, the performance becomes ‘defused’, seems ‘artificial and contrived’, and is less effective (Alexander, 2011: 27). Abbott’s (2005a, 2005b) conceptual framework is relevant to analysing the complex interdependencies between ecologies that are linked to sports. His apprehension of ‘the whole social world in the form of linked ecologies’ (Abbott, 2005b: 247) is appropriate to analyse the arrangements of the actors involved in the Russian crisis, notably the IOC and WADA, who found themselves in a context where they were the ‘hostage to events in adjacent ecologies’ (Abbott, 2005b: 254). Thus, although specific social spaces can be identified in this scenario, the interdependency between them suggests that using the concept of ecology, which gives great attention to fluidity and dynamics, is relevant to capture ‘empirical diversity in the way actors act and groupings of actors change’ (Abbott, 2005a: 4).
Methods
Since our main goal was to understand the interactions between various actors in a complex situation of crisis, we chose to rely on ‘small facts’ to ‘speak to large issues’ (Geertz, 1973: 23). Thus, we did not rely on a single source, nor a systematic exploitation of the data we collected, instead drawing on a diversity of clues collected from multiple sources.
First, the research was based on an initial corpus of 1,143 newspaper articles, including some short comments and long reports (e.g. the McLaren Report). As the crisis continued over a long period, we focused on its core during the 2016 Rio OG. The documents were collected from newspapers, websites (e.g. Insidethegames), social media (Twitter), collaborative networks (e.g. Facebook groups on doping), and official communications (e.g. from the IOC and WADA) published from 2015 to 2018. All documents were publicly available. The data analysis was conducted using Nvivo software. We devised an initial coding scheme and classified the documents by the type of actor concerned – WADA, IOC, International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA), etc. – and then by the discourse theme. Three categories were identified: (1) articles mainly expressing distrust, (2) articles attempting to restore trust, and (3) more neutral and mainly descriptive articles. From this initial corpus, 122 articles published in 2015 and 2016 were selected for further analysis due to their representativeness of the diversity of expression and the perceptions of each key actor’s position during the crisis. These selected articles were analysed using Nvivo with more detailed coding than the three initial categories. Beyond coding, Nvivo was helpful to explore the data and to analyse and reanalyse their content.
Second, we undertook a content analysis of official policy documents from the IOC and WADA, comprising all 91 issues of the Olympic Review published from 1999, when WADA was implemented, to 2019; four official statements from the IOC World Conference on Doping (1999, 2003, 2007 and 2013); and all 35 issues of Play-True, WADA’s official newsletter, published from 2002 to 2015, which represents all available issues.
Finally, we reviewed many formal and informal talks that took place during events such as anti-doping symposiums and workshops with (a) policy-makers from the IOC, WADA, NADOs, and IF; (b) experts from anti-doping labs; (c) journalists and other relevant stakeholders. These events were important opportunities to gain (partial) access to the ‘backstage’ of anti-doping. In total, we collected 58 field-notes from these interactions. To preserve anonymity, the names of the interviewees and any indication to their identification has been changed or omitted, including, in some cases, the names of the organisations they belong to.
Staged Cooperation within the Sporting Field Shaken by the Crisis
Reinforcement of Anti-Doping and its Unrealistic Promises
The Russian crisis occurred in the context of a sporting field characterised by a doxa in which anti-doping is a fundamental principle. The establishment of WADA represents a watershed for anti-doping where sports organisations and governments cooperated to reinforce anti-doping regulation. Previously, the ‘anti-doping policy was weak’ (Houlihan, 2004: 19) and characterised by a lack of resources, an unclear definition of doping, and few effective actions. Since the creation of WADA, ‘clean sport’ became a part of the sport doxa and was continuously emphasised in public speeches and official publications. This idealisation of a drug-free sport and clean sport/athletes was visible in Play-True, as well as in the Olympic Review. Actors from anti-doping organisations, and sometimes the media, experts, or governments, engaged in a shared narrative staging their common commitment to the anti-doping doxa. For example, in August 1999, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and IOC presidents staged a celebration of the unity and cooperation on anti-doping between this federation and IOC. During his address, Dr Nebiolo showed his satisfaction with the current relationship between the IOC and the IAAF: I am glad to have this opportunity to meet you all here, which demonstrates the real unity that exists . . . President Samaranch thanked the IAAF Council for the invitation it had extended to the IOC Executive Board and for its continuing support of the Olympic Movement. In particular, he backed the IAAF’s hard line stance against doping . . . Personally, I believe that athletics deserves to be congratulated because it is fighting doping with facts, not just words. The IAAF should be an example to other federations. (IAAF, 1999)
The IAAF and IOC collaborated in a ‘team presentation’ (Goffman, 1959). Demonstrating the seriousness of anti-doping devices was expected to increase trust in anti-doping and enhance their credibility, defined as ‘the quality of being believable’ (Manning, 2000: 283), with large audiences of actors. This collective momentum to address anti-doping challenges should not, however, be idealised because doubts and criticisms of anti-doping’s effectiveness prompted sports organisations to stage such cooperation. It has been said that the IOC tried to hide some evidence since doping is bad for the image of sport (Seppelt, 2017); as pointed out by an interviewee on the staff of an international anti-doping organisation, doping was, at that time, perceived as an unpleasant and embarrassing matter that contradicted the sport doxa: ‘Just the fact of talking about doping bothered them [the IOC at the beginning of 2000]’.
Burden of Promises
Time is important in understanding anti-doping. Efforts were made after WADA’s creation in 1999, several sports organisations had reinforced the doxa of anti-doping and WADA can be seen as part of a specific social performance from the Olympic Movement’s stakeholders, whose goal was to convince people of a new era of anti-doping. WADA was promoted to restore confidence in anti-doping. For two decades, several major tools have been developed (e.g. the WADA Anti-Doping Code), and several national anti-doping agencies and laboratories have made considerable efforts to tackle doping use.
Many idealistic promises on clean sport were made. The content analysis of Play-True and the Olympic Review reveals three main discourses. The first was to win the war against doping from 1988 (Wagner and Pedersen, 2014), expressed as a wish for ‘drug/doping-free sport’. Second, a ‘zero-tolerance policy’ was a key message around 2007. The third discourse on ‘clean athletes/sport’ (Ohl et al., 2020) has been a motto in WADA and IOC communications since 2013.
These ‘clean sport’ promises created a burden due to the unrealistic goals they set: time matters in doping and these promises created idealistic expectations of sport that are actually impossible to achieve. The Russian crisis, that occurred in this singular context, weakened sports organisations’ credibility and fragilised their cooperation. The publication of the McLaren Report (McLaren, 2016), which revealed internal complicity with doped athletes to a large audience, provoked a considerable crisis that increased suspicions. The IOC and WADA were judged accountable for the situation: IOC, as the umbrella organisation, had failed to control the IAAF and implement a trustworthy anti-doping; WADA, due to its inability to react to indications of a widespread doping problem in Russia.
Uncoordinated Actions and Communication: The Fragilisation of Legitimacy
The revelation of massive cheating in Russia fragilised the belief in the doxa that binds stakeholders and increased the heteronomy of the sporting field. It challenged WADA and IOC communications on the fight against doping, while the gap between the claimed expectations and the sophistication and extent of Russian doping created mistrust. Consequently, cooperation between anti-doping stakeholders decreased and divergences amplified. The IOC and WADA adopted publicly conflicting positions on the Russia ban. To address the scandal, each organisation endeavoured to convince the audience of the legitimacy of its respective decisions. They justified their actions by staging themselves positively and displaced the fault onto other stakeholders. WADA defended its legitimacy while trying to overcome the difficulty of not being able to react appropriately before 2015. It first relied on a specific commission in November 2015 (Pound, 2015) and independent expertise (McLaren, 2016), then communicated on a whistle-blower programme and valorised its results and practical actions (organisational changes, intelligence, investigations, testing, etc.). The IOC also drew on its resources to defend its legitimacy in communications that included inquiry commissions headed by D Oswald and S Schmid and the creation of the International Testing Agency (ITA) (WADA, 2018).
However, WADA and the IOC were unable to perform a ‘team presentation’ (Goffman, 1959) or maintain the appearance of unity, which increased distrust in anti-doping. It was perceived by some well-informed insiders as a mess, creating confusion and tumult: ‘It was incredible, no one understood anything anymore, it was totally chaotic, no decision had a solid legal basis’ (Lawyer specialised in anti-doping, August 2019). This example shows that analysing relations between anti-doping stakeholders as collusions is far from reality. The crisis fragilised the binding role of the anti-doping doxa, and, consequently, the influence of each particular situation and its specific contingencies increased.
WADA as a ‘Trust Device’ with Specific Contingencies
WADA was criticised for being too slow to react (Dimeo and Møller, 2018: 68). However, WADA’s specific ecology must be considered in order to understand its slow response. WADA had legal contingencies: before 2015 the Code did not allow WADA to investigate or consequently, to trigger investigations, WADA would have been obliged to pass the information on whistle-blowers to RUSADA and/or the IAAF as the two bodies empowered to initiate investigations into doping in Russian athletics at this time, and WADA determined that sharing this information would have led to negative consequences for the whistle-blowers, Vitaly and Yuliya Stepanov. As other ‘judgement/trust devices’ (Karpik, 2010), symbolic action is at least equally as important as material action. Therefore, being perceived as slow was detrimental, as it made visible a lack of coherence between the promises and the effective actions.
Consequently, before the 2016 Rio OG, WADA had to act differently to regain confidence. It faced a conundrum between provoking a significant crisis by sharing the McLaren Report just before the OG or delaying its publication and asking for more evidence, thus avoiding a short-term crisis but risking increased mistrust in anti-doping. With a report revealing that ‘The Ministry of Sport directed, controlled and oversaw the manipulation of athletes’ analytical results’ (McLaren, 2016: 86), WADA decided to issue a strong statement and call for the ban of Russian athletes to avoid facing mistrust. However, WADA’s decision was mainly perceived by the IOC as a hostile act that was far beyond its prerogatives and challenged the IOC’s powerful position within the sporting field. According to an IF member we interviewed in 2017, the IOC was upset by WADA’s call: WADA sees itself as an absolute authority and a model of governance . . . There is a systematic suspicion against international sports federations, while some are really involved in anti-doping . . . They present McLaren as an independent person, even though he had many WADA mandates.
WADA was able to act independently from the IOC because it is a hybrid organisation, in which governments and the IOC are stakeholders (Wagner, 2009). This limits the IOC’s power and autonomy on anti-doping and, according to a WADA member interviewed in 2016 after the Rio OG, it probably protected WADA from the IOC’s requirements during the Russian crisis.
IOC’s Autonomy and Power Challenged
WADA’s call for a blanket ban of Russian athletes (17 July 2016) threatened the IOC’s autonomy and its power over the selection of the athletes for the OG. On the one hand, it put the IOC in the uncomfortable position of having to decide just before the OG whether the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) and Russian athletes should be banned. On the other hand, the IOC faced political, symbolic, and economic constraints: for example, to maintain its economic power, the IOC needs global media coverage and a diversity of host cities, which the exclusion of the Russian athletes could have threatened. It also had to consider the geopolitical dimensions of a ban. Internally, certain decisions may have challenged the established alliances between the IOC and eastern countries and fed struggles within the organisation. Externally, banning Russian athletes posed the risk of reactivating a Cold War-type atmosphere between Russia and the USA. The IOC’s position as a transnational organisation (Maguire, 1999) may further explain its reluctance to exclude an important country like Russia. Finally, it also had to consider the legal constraints, while the decision-making timeframe was very short and did not allow time for a serious inquiry.
As a consequence of this threat to its power, the IOC questioned the basis for WADA’s existence, as the journalist Robert Katz echoed (2016). WADA’s management of the Russian crisis was perceived by the IOC as inflaming the situation and increasing distrust in anti-doping. Ultimately, the IOC did not follow WADA’s call for a blanket ban on Russia (2 August 2016) and decided to allow the IFs to make the decision.
1
This rejection of WADA’s proposal was interpreted as an expression of IOC defiance towards WADA: One sure way to tell the weakness of an organisation is to see what its supporters are saying about it. By that standard, WADA is very weak indeed. For example, although WADA is half funded by the IOC, 84 out of 85 IOC members in Rio, last August, opposed WADA’s position on the alleged Russian doping situation. (Katz, 2016)
The IOC’s decision turned out to be unpopular and ‘public opinion turned against them for letting Russia send an almost full-strength team to the Games’ (Guardian, 2016). The organisation was accused of not being courageous enough to defend a strong anti-doping doxa (e.g. ‘Too little, too late, may well be the refrain Bach hears back’ (Lord, 2016)). As a WADA member observed, the IOC’s staging was an attempt to hide divisions and a messy situation: The IOC and the sports movement in general, but the IOC in particular, gives an impression of harmony that does not exist at all . . . today the Olympic Movement is a real mess . . . Many IFs were very upset about what happened before the Olympics . . . they also were obliged to take decisions on athletes outside any existing legal framework, and that goes with an injustice inherent to such a situation. That caused great harm within some IFs and within the Olympic Movement itself. (WADA member, October 2016)
IOC’s Performance: WADA as the Culprit
To restore its image, the IOC first attempted to displace the fault onto WADA. Some of its members expressed strong criticism of WADA, threatening its legitimacy. Bubka, an IOC Executive Board member and a famous former athlete, claimed that WADA needed to change to restore confidence and value for money (Butler, 2016b), while Gilady, a media specialist and member of numerous commissions at the IOC, stated ‘It is not the reputation of the IOC which must be restored, but the reputation of WADA’ (Butler, 2016a). Finally, Werthein, another IOC member, questioned the independence, professionalism, and value for money of the organisation, and contested WADA’s jurisdiction (Werthein, 2016), concurrently with the announcement of the ITA’s creation. It was a key element of the IOC’s quest to increase its autonomy and power. A strong and successful ITA can be a resource to regain power in the doxa since the ITA is under the IOC’s control. The implementation of the ITA was a clear sign of the IOC’s mistrust in WADA. It remains a new configuration of trust jurisdictions (Abbott, 1988), as expressed in the ITA’s communication: ‘the ITA [is about] . . . strengthening the trust that athletes and the sports movement have in the fight against doping and in the protection of clean athletes’ (Fourneyron, 2018).
Ecology of the Games: Weakened Social Performance in Times of Crisis
The Russian crisis not only revealed a huge deception on the part of RUSADA and the ROC but also the fragile social performances of anti-doping actors. The IOC and WADA’s contradictory positions gave an outstanding opportunity for a wide range of actors of adjacent ecologies to express their criticisms and values, and, similarly, gain valuable public recognition, thereby weakening the credibility of and trust in anti-doping, as well as the legitimacy of WADA and the IOC. The scale of the crisis, the implication of the Russian state, and the reactions of other countries explains that the dramaturgy was also disrupted by multifaceted geopolitical games. Additionally, sports organisations’ loss of credibility was feared to be contagious, and criticism took the place of celebration as the dominant discourse, while the crisis also increased struggles between the organisations to redefine the regulations and jurisdictions (Abbott, 1988) of anti-doping. Alliances, struggles, oppositions, betrayal and strategies were unstable throughout the crisis and should be understood as interrelated. Consequently, a field analysis seems too narrow to understand these complex interactions in diverse social spaces. Abbott’s idea of linked ecologies, in its extended acceptation, is therefore an effective conceptual framework to grasp the complexity of these interactions that mediate the meanings of the crisis.
Media Games
Media is a particularly important ecology because it plays two critical roles: first, it is an arena in which actors stage their social performance; second, it involves journalists, who can be very influential for the success of other actors’ social performances. Sports journalism has been particularly criticised for its lack of critical investigation, its failure to deal seriously with the institutional politics of sport, and its position as a booster and promoter of sports (Rowe, 2007). Nevertheless, the recent development of digital media has produced a competitive displacement effect, particularly in the daily news domain (Dimmick et al., 2004), forcing traditional media journalists to redefine the way they treat sports news and leading them to develop a less descriptive style (Schoch, 2013).
During the Russian crisis, a few journalists were at the forefront of the inquiry and played key roles. This was particularly the case with German journalist Hajo Seppelt, who revealed in the 2014 televised documentary that the two whistle-blowers had informed WADA in 2010 that doping was endemic in Russian sports (Hobson, 2016). Seppelt was tipped off by a WADA staff member who advised the Russian whistle-blowers to contact him in order to publicise the case. This can be explained by WADA’s lack of investigative power prior to 2015. As a WADA member told us: If we had exposed the initial information provided by Vitaly Stepanov between 2010 and 2013, it would have been dismissed as being the words of one individual against the strong denial of Russia. We are convinced that we would not have had anywhere near the success that we ultimately had; in fact, we believe that the international community would not even be talking about doping in Russia today.
As a non-governmental agency, WADA’s power still remains limited by legal (any serious investigations need the support of national justice authorities) and economic constraints. 2 Nevertheless, Seppelt’s investigation led to a crisis that challenged WADA’s role and independence. Seppelt’s provocative tone stands out compared to the more nuanced approach that other journalists adopted when covering this crisis: for example, in another documentary titled Doping Top Secret – The Olympic Conspiracy (Part 1), Seppelt (2018) depicts collusion between the IOC and the Russian state. The documentary alternately shows images of Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, and Thomas Bach, the IOC President, together – the latter congratulating Putin – and images of a hole drilled into the Sochi lab to swap the samples, accompanied by the soundtrack of Bach’s voice repeating ‘respect the rules, play fair, be clean’.
Breaking news and leading criticisms are a way for sports journalists to build professional recognition and to increase their audience. The Russian crisis was an extraordinary opportunity for this German journalist to enhance his professional value: Seppelt gained a powerful position allowing him to disseminate his work widely. Seppelt’s report found a significant audience among the general public, but he was identified both by anti-doping actors and his colleagues as independently seeking professional achievement without much ethical stance, nor any specific interest in sports: ARD [German National TV Consortium] has set up a real investigation unit. Once you have a few cases out, the cases come to you without doing anything. You’re known for that . . . Seppelt takes advantage of this and does it in a brutal way, without nuances . . . he is in a kind of position of power that encourages him to give moral lessons. I don’t like what he’s doing and how he wants to crush others. (Sports journalist, 2017)
Seppelt’s main goal is not to gain power within the sporting field but to increase his audience and professional recognition. However, journalism can have a strong influence on the circulation of criticism, as one anti-doping staff member working in an NADO perceived: Of course, the criticisms are a little embarrassing and not always well-founded, but it makes it possible to say things that cannot be said. If WADA says the same thing, there would be complaints, it would be blamed for its recklessness. WADA couldn’t denounce links between Bach and Putin. (NADO Staff member, 2018)
As the IOC and WADA fought, rather than collaborated, their explanations of their respective choices were inaudible and gave an avenue for any denunciation in the media, wherever its origin. Consequently, WADA and the IOC’s performances were weakened, which prevented them from convincing audiences of their trustworthiness.
Stakeholders’ Performances Disrupted by Geopolitical Games
The 2014 Sochi Games can be seen as a form of ‘resurrection drama’ through which Russia tried to stage and restore ‘its former status and reputation on the international stage’ (Persson and Petersson, 2014: 201). President Putin sought to deliver a vibrant and grandiose games to show the greatness of his regime to the Russian people and to the world: he showed that he was able to face the terrorist threats from the Caucasus and to overcome Russia’s notorious reputation, particularly that of endemic corruption, in terms of infrastructure and organisation. Moreover, Putin portrayed himself as a ‘strong leader’ (Persson and Petersson, 2014). The Sochi Olympics were a recognition of Russian might and a source of pride for the Russians of Putin’s generation (Reynolds, 2014). They staged the unity of the country, which was ‘hard to separate from the unity behind the president’ (Persson and Petersson, 2014: 199): it was a type of successful ‘fused’ dramaturgy. However, social performance can be fragile and vulnerable. After the many revelations of the Russian state-sponsored doping, Putin’s social performance rapidly transformed into a disaster with regard to international audiences. It also incited actors from western countries to exploit the Russian symbolic counter-performance and was a great opportunity for a geopolitical battle, reactivating a kind of Cold War between the USA and Russia and their respective allies. Consequently, the IOC and WADA’s performances were caught in the midst of broader geopolitical dramas, in a tense atmosphere due to a kind of ‘new sporting cold war in the world of sports’ (Altukhov and Nauright, 2018: 1120). The revelations of the Fancy Bears, an anonymous cyber espionage group that seemed to be supported by Russia (Bartlett, 2018), on WADA’s Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) management, convincingly illustrated this issue. The Fancy Bears targeted the White House and the CIA, amongst others, hacking WADA and releasing confidential documents on athletes’ TUE in 2018. Their revelations suggested collusion between WADA and western countries.
WADA and the IOC’s respective attempts to restore their credibility were also threatened by some western countries’ NADOs. One instructive example is the role of Travis Tygart, head of the American Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), in the Russian crisis: he was often at the forefront of the criticism and suggested collusion between the IOC and WADA, despite their diverging positions, denouncing WADA’s lack of independence and criticising it for being too complacent when dealing with doping: The current top global official in the fight against doping, Craig Reedie, president of the WADA, is also an executive board member of the IOC. ‘We have to remove the conflict of interest’, Mr. Tygart said, ‘and ensure that the fox is no longer allowed to guard the hen house’. (Ruiz, 2016)
Tygart’s commitment can be viewed as part of a geopolitical power game. WADA and the IOC’s social performances were weakened by powerful actors that were playing their own games: ‘Tygart wants to discredit WADA and the IOC to give the power to the NADOs’ (NADO staff, 2017).
According to a NADO staff member, Tygart took advantage of the crisis to increase ‘NADO and Western governments’ power over WADA. Indeed, USADA, with Tygart’s support, organised a meeting hosted by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) in October 2018 to change anti-doping governance in the name of a virtual ‘global athletic community’ (ONDCP, 2018). Shortly after, the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act was introduced at the Senate Congress (29 January 2019), which gave federal law enforcement the authority to pursue international doping fraud conspiracies, which was strongly supported by USADA. This new US law formed part of a geopolitical struggle threatening WADA’s role and jurisdiction (Abbott, 1988). It relied heavily on Rodchenkov’s testimony to prove the dysfunction of anti-doping. Nonetheless, although not doubting the allegations of state-sponsored doping in Russia, some insiders suggested placing the testimony in its context: Rodchenkov must step up a notch in the sensational so as not to be forgotten. He tries to be credible by denouncing more and also to stay protected by the CIA. (Anti-doping scientist, 2017)
Finally, the ONDCP called for WADA’s funding to be withdrawn if the ‘American taxpayers [do not] receive a tangible return on their investment . . . in the form of clean sport, fair play, effective administration of the world anti-doping system and a proportionate voice in WADA decision-making’ (ONDCP, 2020: 45). Furthermore, a new organisation named Global Athlete, claiming, as Tygart did, to be the ‘representatives of the global athletic community and international sports leadership’, emerged under the leadership of former WADA deputy director-general Rob Koehler. Global Athlete’s dramaturgy relied on the appropriation of athletes’ voices and the staging of a unified call for change at WADA (Athletes for Clean Sport, 2018), which was seen as a strategy to gain more control over WADA from an eastern point of view: ‘USADA and Tygart are putting pressure on WADA to appear more credible. They want to show that they alone are fighting doping properly’ (Russian anti-doping actor during the 2018 WADA symposium).
Discussion and Conclusion
Analysing the interactions between anti-doping stakeholders dealing with the complex social problem of the Russian crisis in a single study may seem unrealistic. Such an ambition presents at least two weaknesses. First, it does not sufficiently consider the actors’ social characteristics (e.g. social background, education, beliefs, or sports career). Second, it does not allow much consideration of the complexity of each organisation or the actors that contribute to the links between them. This explains why research tends to focus on specific actors and narrow questions; however, the big picture is often missing in the understanding of social problems. This research aimed to provide a framework to map and understand the dramaturgy of anti-doping, and to especially show how actors frame interactions and how, when the binding role of the doxa is fragilised due to a scandal, the influence of each actor’s ‘ecologies’ (Abbott, 2005a) increased. This anti-doping crisis is a relevant opportunity for an empirical study of the transformation of social spaces over time and to engage a dialogue among different theories of social space, as suggested by Liu and Emirbayer (2016).
Power, Doxa, and Social Performance
Bourdieu’s ‘constructivist structuralism’ (1989: 14) is relevant to understanding the Olympic Movement’s autonomy and power, which was strong enough to control the sport doxa for years. The doxa binds actors of the sporting field and favours collaborative drama, although this does not hold true in times of crisis. Anti-doping doxa is crucial for the IOC because it aims to protect the sport capital, that is, its strong ‘symbolic capital’ (i.e. accumulated recognition and prestige) within the field of sport. Anti-doping is used to protect the IOC’s control over sporting competitions, which gives the IOC ‘power over the (sport) capital’ (Bourdieu, 2011: 127).
During the Russian crisis, the IOC and WADA disagreed on many points regarding how they should deal with the situation, despite their common interest in cooperating on anti-doping, especially given the shared doxa. Consequently, they were unable to display to others the meaning of the situation or to convince other actors of the coherence of their position. Their opposing positions, abundantly reported by the media, highlight their inability to cooperate in a social performance. WADA and the IOC’s independent displays fuelled the divisions, damaged their image and reduced confidence in anti-doping. Bourdieu’s field theory is relevant to understanding the IOC’s firm stance on protecting its power and symbolic capital within and without the sporting field. However, it would be a mistake to analyse all relations under the lens of power. WADA will never challenge the IOC’s dominance in the sporting field: it has other contingencies linked to its own specific ecology. To defend its role, WADA needs to show a certain independence from the IOC, and despite its powerful position, the IOC was unable to drive WADA’s decisions.
Bourdieu’s field theory is also relevant to observing how the doxa is a narrative that simplifies, on a moral level, the complexity of anti-doping norms. Staging material devices, such as the laboratories and testing, and a binary moral opposition are part of anti-doping dramatisation. During the Russian crisis, due to their publicly exposed contradictory moral evaluations, actors of the sporting field were unable ‘to project their meanings effectively’ (Alexander, 2004: 531) and they failed to ‘re-fuse’ the ‘disentangled elements’ of their performance (Alexander, 2004: 529–533). The moral agonism, as part of ‘the inner structures of social performance’ (Alexander, 2004: 552), was abundantly staged by the IOC and WADA in a binary opposition between good and evil. However, the IOC and WADA were trapped, perceived as being too passive and tolerant and, consequently, as failing to protect the ‘clean athletes’ as they had promised.
Complex Interactional Structures of the Linked Ecologies
The homologous positions and oppositions identified by Bourdieu (1984) can be identified between the sporting, economic, and political fields: in some specific contexts the dominant actors of sport may occupy similar positions in other fields and benefit therefrom. Bourdieu’s fields are relevant to observe how dominant actors produce a doxa and try to protect their autonomy and power. Some actors from adjacent ecologies may want to influence power relations, which can be seen in how some governments’ criticisms of the IOC and WADA are influenced by geopolitics and the wish to increase their power in the sporting field.
Field models may be adapted to specific contexts (Benson, 2005), but not to analyse a complex social performance, such as the Russian crisis, the stakes of which depend on multiple social spaces. All interactants and critics are not challengers, as they do not fight to be more powerful within the field. WADA’s goal is not to appropriate the prestige and incomes of mega-events. WADA needs to protect its jurisdiction (Abbott, 1988), which requires it to defend its independence and existence as a ‘trust device’ (Karpik, 1996). Consequently, WADA was a thorn in the side of the IOC because it challenged its power over control of the anti-doping doxa. Further, actors’ interactions can be entrenched in a huge diversity of social spaces, which may be observed as ‘ecologies, each of which acts as a (flexible) surround for others’ (Abbott, 2005b: 246). Bourdieu’s model, supporting homologous relations between fields, scarcely explains what happens at the frontiers of the field, and how actors of one field interact with actors from other ecologies. Therefore, it is more appropriate to analyse interactions as linked ecologies ‘judged by various “audiences”’ (Abbott, 2005b: 246). However, as noted by Liu and Emirbayer (2016: 70), ‘most ecological model[s] in sociology are highly homogeneous’. This suggests the relevance of revisiting Abbott’s model to give more attention to the diversity and dynamics of interactions in ecologies that are more ‘open and heterogeneous’ (Liu and Emirbayer, 2016: 73), as is the case for complex global phenomena such as Olympic sports.
Abbott’s sociology gives little attention to power: it is more focused on ‘a competitive and equilibrating model’ that is ‘more cooperative and less coercive’ (Liu and Emirbayer, 2016: 69) and better fits an analysis of actors who are not entrenched in a field. Analysis centred on power often underestimates the complexity of actors’ games. Hence, it is reductive to highlight a significant ‘alliance between the WADA, law enforcement authorities, sports organisers and the media’ (Møller and Dimeo, 2014: 260), which echoes the denunciation of collusion between WADA and the IOC by journalists like Seppelt. Moreover, asserting that the Olympic Movement is mainly driven by sponsors and television networks (Hoberman, 2001) also misses the complexity. Although collusions exist, analysing the IOC and WADA’s relations as an alliance with the media and the industry is not relevant to understand the important divisions and tensions between actors. Instead, Abbott’s apprehension of ecology as ‘complex interactional structure’, rather than unified structures (Abbott, 2005b: 247), seems appropriate to avoid simplistic understandings. It helps to show that, during the Russian crisis, the IOC and WADA’s social performance was not effective: in a time of crisis, the
Time and Structure Matters
As shown in this study, for the IOC and many other actors involved in the crisis, power plays a key role. However, it is less important for WADA, which is more concerned with how to maintain its jurisdiction. The questions of power and inequality are the most significant differences between Bourdieu and Abbott (Liu and Emirbayer, 2016). However, Abbott (2005a) acknowledges that Bourdieu’s and his methods have much in common: they both locate actors in the social space and, relative to other actors, they agree to consider structures (fields versus ecologies) and conflicts. Further, time is also central for both. Through the lens of field theory, Bourdieu observes that ‘the history of sport is … relatively autonomous . . . [it] has its own tempo, its own evolutionary laws, its own crises’ (1993: 118). Similarly, for Abbott, ‘social structure[s] [are] embedded in time’ (1997: 1158) and interactions are not ‘methodological nuisance[s]’ but rather ‘the way social reality happens’ (1997: 1159). Considering the dramaturgies as simultaneously embedded in the history of sport, media, and geopolitics, with their own temporality, is therefore appropriate. This holds true even when the small dramas require analysis within their specific time and space, regardless of whether conceptualised as field or linked ecologies. There is a binding force of promises (Junge, 2006), which are anticipations that entail obligations, especially to be accountable for the promises, and force us to consider temporality to understand the successes and failures of social performance. Further, our observations indicate that time and space matter in encoding the crisis because actors, as observed by Cooley (1962 [1909]), permanently redefine the meanings, adjust their actions to the real or virtual reactions of others, and have an influence on the acts themselves.
The dramas have their own history. The success of a performance can be temporary, as was the case for the Sochi Games, and the events that punctuate time matter for social performances. Consequently, conflicting social performances cannot simply be analysed in synchrony. They should instead be analysed over time with regard to their structural and contextual dimensions; the lens of the field or linked ecology can be both relevant to and appropriate for focusing on the more macro-sociological aspects of social performances.
Social Performances and Power
Due to the doxa and the reckless promises of drug-free sport, the structural positions of the IOC and WADA – respectively a powerful actor in the sporting field and an uncomfortable intermediary between sport and governments – made it very difficult for them to ‘display for others the meaning of their social situation’ (Alexander, 2004: 529). The Russian crisis increased divisions among anti-doping actors and sports stakeholders, and it became more difficult to ‘bring together some combination of actors across all these ecologies at once’ (Abbott, 2005a: 247). Although Abbott’s model pays little attention to power, the linked ecologies may nevertheless influence both relations of power within a field and actors’ social performances, since they provide many evaluations and criticisms of social performances.
As in other domains (Morgan, 2018), social performances play an important role in the control of symbolic productions and in the power games between organisations. Despite their differences, many actors of the Olympic Movement are bound by their economic dependence on the IOC and their common belief, which can be a ‘condition for the effectiveness of ritual’ (Bourdieu, 1991: 126). These favourable social conditions explain the relative effectiveness of the IOC’s social performances within the field (Bourdieu, 1989, 1991). This performativity relies on the IOC’s symbolic power that is ‘based on the possession of symbolic capital’ (Bourdieu, 1989: 23).
Bourdieu’s analysis is relevant to understanding how power is at stake in culture. However, power is primarily conceived as structured by the distribution of capital, often economic and cultural, within specific fields. As for other fields, we may acknowledge ‘the relative autonomy of the field of sport . . . affirmed in the powers of self-administration and rule-making’ (Bourdieu, 1993: 120). The interactions between the sporting field and its adjacent actors situated in other fields and ecologies, however, such as journalism and politics, are more complex than structural homology relations. For Alexander (2011), Bourdieu’s conception of cultural power, based on material and symbolic resources, is opposite to his mainly performative conception of power. However, Alexander possibly minimises Bourdieu’s attention to symbolic capital, which is also performative and gained by ‘exhibiting, publishing or staging’ products (Bourdieu, 1980: 263).
Finally, using Alexander’s (2004: 557) differentiation between productive, distributive and hermeneutical powers may provide a possible articulation between sociological models that are often considered incompatible. The example of doping shows that the doxa is produced in the sporting field, as a set of practices, values and narratives, under the influence of specific historical and social circumstances (Bourdieu, 1993). The analysis of this Russian crisis demonstrates that using Bourdieu is appropriate to understand that the ‘productive power’ of anti-doping rules is embedded in the sporting field, in which the IOC and WADA play a central role. However, Alexander’s (1995: 163) criticism of the low autonomy given by Bourdieu to fields seen as homologous and dependant on the political or economic fields is relevant. Further, Bourdieu’s idea of homology between fields is somewhat too simplified to render the complexity of ‘distributive power’ (Alexander, 2004: 557). Abbott’s linked ecologies, in which actors such as journalists or academics mediate performance and audience, better renders the complexity of the interactions between actors and explain WADA and the IOC’s difficulties. Their social performances remained ‘defused’ because they were unable to communicate the meanings of their action successfully and, consequently, faced difficulties convincing audiences of their sincerity. Further, ‘critical evaluations’ (Alexander, 2004: 559) are continuous and enter performances from both outside and inside fields and ecologies, which is why the circulating meanings have a relative autonomy and partly escape the actors of the sporting field and of related ecologies. Finally, this article shows that it would be unfortunate to deprive performance analysis of sociological models that provide a stimulating gaze on the production and distribution of performances.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
Funding
The research grant (FNS_100017_166236), from the Swiss National Science Foundation, was beneficial for this research since it has enabled us to develop research into issues of trust and credibility related to doping issues.
