The Quantified-Self Movement and Basketball: From Cagers to Cyborgs

This paper seeks to describe and survey the sociological perspectives on the emerging quantified-self movement as applied to basketball.  Modern society has long adhered to self-management techniques found in cultural artifacts such as wristwatches and alarm clocks.  Much of the movement is targeted specifically in the sectors of health care and bodily wellness programs.  With this ever-increasing integration between material technologies and the corporeal body, this offers an opportunity to assess these trends both descriptively and from critically sociological perspectives.  The paper will review the research literature regarding the quantified-self movement, while locating the movement in time and space, as applied to basketball.  A review of past, present, and emerging forms of the quantification of the body playing basketball will be addressed.  Further, this paper is informed by Michel Foucault’s work on the body, yet it specifies bio-power techniques as exerted on the corporeal body from the corporate body.  Namely, how corporations today, exert a constantly measuring surveillance system over professional basketball athletes. What sociological perspectives can best inform our understanding and use of these emerging technologies?