Fifteenth International Conference on Sport & Society

Abstract

This paper charts the conceptual interlockings of sport, surveillance studies, and Black feminist sociology to provide a framework for understanding how structures and systems of control impact the Black female basketball experience. This is accomplished by unpacking the use of holistic surveillance as a tool for reinforcing power stratification within intercollegiate athletics. Additionally, this paper heeds to the cautionary advice of Big Data scholars (Baerg, 2017; Hutchins, 2016; and Osborne and Cunningham, 2017) by evaluating the rising use of biometric technologies within intercollegiate athletics, interrogating their use and organizational policy protections. While biometric technologies such as microchipped compression layers and sleep sensors are framed as performance enhancing tools, the consent of the student-athlete is not required to mandate use unlike professional athletes. Most importantly, they have primary ownership of the data collected. Student-athletes, legally registered as amateurs, are unable to employ the same labor-oriented channels to voice and exercise their bodily autonomy with said technologies. This paper evaluates the institutional motivations in restricting student-athlete bodily autonomy by employing a critical discourse analysis to map the ever shifting landscape of biometric technologies within intercollegiate athletics. Ultimately, by unpacking the use of bodily regulation as a tool for reinforcing power stratification within intercollegiate athletics this paper is strategically positioned to add nuance to the study of the political economy of the institution of sport.