Pluralizing expertise in sport: the epistemic challenges of a holistic vision of physical activity

This article looks at the ways in which different forms of knowledge are constructed, which shed light on and give meaning to PSA (Physical and Sports Activities) developed in Western societies marked by the predominance of the competitive model of modern sport. By studying the academic space of training and research in PSA in France, the text analyzes the interrelation of social and epistemic processes, and more specifically, the interdependence between organizational, axiological, and epistemic dimensions that impact the visions of PSA and the construction of knowledge about PSA. The research is based on various surveys (ethnographic observations and interviews) conducted individually or collectively over more than twenty-five years. The work argues that the challenge of developing holistic approaches to PSA involves and is driven by a new relationship between academic expertise (different scientific disciplines) and extra-academic expertise (decision-makers, practitioners, beneficiaries). While relations of power and domination have marked the history of relations between these knowledges-powers, they are now more likely to collaborate. The paper recounts this process, considering four major historical sequences that successively highlight: the historical dominance of the academic biological expertise of university doctors in the first half of the 20th century; multi-inter-transdisciplinarity as a process of pluralization of scientific expertise in the 1960s and 1970s; and, finally, the end of the 20th century and the first quarter of the 21st century, marked by tensions but also by the challenge of coordinating multiple forms of expertise, whether scientific or non-scientific (extra-academic expertise).