Declining power differentials and expanding social constraints: the development of anti-doping functions in cycling

The motor of increasing social concerns about the use of stimulants and their stigmatisation, came from the broader social structure. Expanding social interdependences, less unequal power balances at the societal level, and changes in social habitus led, to on the one hand to increasing concern of the health effects of stimulant use by cyclists, and on other to the stigmatisation of stimulants in the 1950s and 1960s. This ultimately led to the development of anti-doping functions and greater social constraints on doping which contributed to the advance in the threshold of shame outlined in the previous chapter. Yet, it was a fractured and uneven process, subject to reversals and discontinuities. The failure of a comprehensive monopoly apparatus for the prevention of doping to develop, in parallel with other processes, contributed to these schisms. Nonetheless, social constraints to prevent and stigmatise doping did expand and develop into self-restraints and greater shame feelings.