SPIN DOCTORS AND SPORTSBROKERS

Abstract

This article explores some of the methodological and ethical issues that arise when undertaking ethnographic research into the governing bodies of world sport. Drawing on the author's own attempts to penetrate the operations of La Société du Tour de France, this article presents two positions (i) that increasing attention should be paid to the role of the cultural broker in examining the institutional power exerted by the sporting and administrative elites of world sport and (ii) that researching sporting elites calls for a certain methodological ingenuity in order to gain and sustain access to a research site. The closed, exclusive nature of organizations such as La Société du Tour de France presents a number of challenges for anthropological and sociological inquiries into the elite bodies of world sport.