Crime, Deviance and Doping - (Palgrave Pivot) by M Yar (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Yar examines the autobiographies of fallen sports stars, exploring their fall from grace and the stigma it entails. Drawing upon sociological and criminological perspectives, it illuminates how fallen stars use confessional acts of story-telling to seek forgiveness, vindication and redemption.

Review Quotes

"Crime, Deviance and Doping is a brief empirical study demonstrating the flow of highly stylised popular sports narratives from early childhood, to aspiring professional, to elite celebrity and public disgrace after being formally 'outed' for doping. ... offer an extremely valuable template for understanding the criminological significance of sport, celebrity and popular culture that is of immense use to both experienced and new criminological researchers." (Ian Warren, Current Issues in Criminal Justice, November, 2015)

"A highly readable account of the spectacular falls-from-grace of some of the most acclaimed sporting heroes of our time. Weaving sports stars' own accounts with classic sociological theory, Majid Yar offers fascinating insight into the stages that athletes caught doping go through: from stigma and spoiled identities, through neutralisation of their offences, to redemption and transcendence. Scholars of identity, drugs offences and crime in sport will all admire this book and students will be inspired by it for their own research projects. This is how to apply criminological theory!" - Yvonne Jewkes, University of Leicester, UK

"Yar explores the interweaving of narrative, crime and deviance along with fame and celebrity, cutting to the heart of the relationship by firmly grounding his exploration within time tested social theories. Yar has achieved what excellent sociologists do - he has identified and explored an intriguing and pertinent social occurrence in a pithy and analytical manner, laying open the field for future research. Consequently, he makes a solid contribution not only to sociological and criminological literature, but specifically to the small, yet growing, research investigating the intricate relationship shared by celebrity, crime and deviance within society." - Ruth Penfold-Mounce, Theoretical Criminology

About the Author

Majid Yar is Professor of Sociology at the University of Hull, UK. He has researched and published widely in the areas of crime & deviance studies, media & popular culture, and social & criminological theory.