The War on Drugs in Sport Moral Panics and Organizational Legitimacy by Dr Vanessa McDermott (RMIT PCPM)

Routledge have recently published (RMIT PCPM Staff member) Dr Vanessa McDermott’s work, The War on Drugs in Sport Moral Panics and Organizational Legitimacy, in their Sport, Culture and Society series. This book is an innovative and compelling work that develops a modified moral panic model illustrated by the drugs in sport debate. Drawing on Max Weber’s work on moral authority and legitimacy, McDermott argues that doping scandals create a crisis of legitimacy for sport governing bodies and other elite groups. This crisis leads to a moral panic, where the issue at stake for elite groups is perceptions of their organizational legitimacy. The book highlights the role of the media as a site where claims to legitimacy are made, and contested, contributing to the social construction of a moral panic. The book explores the way regulatory responses, in this case anti-doping policies in sport, reflect the interests of elite groups and the impact of those responses on individuals, or “folk devils.” The War on Drugs in Sport makes a key contribution to moral panic theory by adapting Goode and Ben-Yehuda’s moral panic model to capture the diversity of interests and complex relationships between elite groups. The difference between this book and others in the field is its application of a new theoretical perspective, supported by well-researched empirical evidence.

Author: Taylor and Francis Publishing (through Dr Vanessa McDermott)

Image: Taylor and Francis Publishing (through Dr Vanessa McDermott)