What do we really know about doping ‘effects’? An argument for doping effects as co-constituted ‘phenomena’

• Drug ‘effects’ are of central concern to drugs researchers.
• Existing approaches to studying ‘effects’ suffer from key limitations.
• Theorist Karen Barad has proposed a new method for studying cause and effect.
• I show how Barad's work is useful for the study of drugs and doping.
• I consider how her ideas might be deployed in future research.

This paper focusses on the mutual concern of alcohol and other drug (AOD) and doping researchers with what might be broadly termed drug ‘effects’. I argue that the main approaches to drug ‘effects’ (realism and social constructionism) have several important limitations, including the idea that reality is determined by either matter or discourse. In this way, both approaches are problematic insofar as they often fail to take account of the other, or do so in a way that can be incoherent or internally contradictory. In recent years the most radical intervention in these debates has come via the work of feminist science studies scholar Karen Barad. Combining insights from quantum physics and feminist theory, Barad has developed a new theoretical framework for understanding cause and effect. In this paper, I provide a broad introduction to and overview of Barad's work. I introduce Barad's concepts of ‘intra-activity’ and the ‘phenomenon’ and outline how these have been mobilised in recent AOD scholarship. I argue that Barad's theoretical framework has opened up new and important questions for AOD researchers, and that her theoretical approach has the potential to similarly inspire more critical work on doping and more nuanced analyses of doping policy that are no longer predicated on the assumption that drugs always do what we are told they do. I conclude with some observations regarding ways that Barad's theoretical framework might be deployed in future research into drugs and sport.