Sociologists of health have regularly called into question strictly knowledge-based health promotion approaches that focus on individual lifestyle change, claiming preference for collective actions on social determinants of health. These critiques have more recently been directed towards the issue of obesity. Although there is a growing body of work that shows the connection between poverty, obesity and ill health, few studies have focused on the concerns for health and lifestyle of vulnerable populations. In this qualitative study, 15 in-depth interviews were conducted with young underprivileged women in order to capture their dispositions towards health practices by outlining sociocultural factors that do (or do not) incline them to pursue a health regimen and weight control strategies. By drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, practical sense and 'choice of the necessary', the results suggest that inclinations to follow normative health guidelines are strongly influenced by family and financial responsibilities and by pressing health concerns rather than a calculation of how the prescribed risk avoidance behaviours will improve personal health and/or prevent illness for one's own sake. In conclusion, this study highlights the limits of prescribed 'solutions' to health improvement that have little to no consideration of embodied social knowledge and lived experiences.
In this article, Foucault’s notions of disciplinary power and biopower are used in examining representations of pregnancy, fitness, and health in “Fit for Two,” a tips column for new and expectant mothers in Oxygen magazine. The neoliberal emphasis on personal responsibility for health has found a “fertile” home in the column. Medical discourse encouraging individual risk management (i.e., moderate exercise for a healthy pregnancy) and discourses promoting feminine bodily norms are combined with advertisements for pregnancy-related health products to suggest that a woman can transform herself into a “fit” mother through appropriate disciplinary and consumer practices. The article concludes with a discussion of the way in which the pregnant body remains a site of control in contemporary Western society.
In this article I explore the production of medical knowledge about exercise during pregnancy in the latter half of the 20th century, illustrating how debates about the safe limits of maternal exercise were rooted in longstanding anxieties surrounding the female reproductive body as well as epistemological questions concerning what counts as knowledge or evidence in the scientific realm. By drawing to the surface the "rules of formation" for the production of knowledge about the pregnant body, I aim to bring to light the contingent nature of this knowledge--never neutral but always bound up in relations of power.
The rise of fitness-tracking devices such as the Fitbit in personal health and wellness is emblematic of the use of data-gathering health and fitness technologies by institutions to create a surveillance regime. Using postings on Fitbit community message boards and the theoretical frames of Michel Foucault and sociomaterialist scholars, the goal of this article is to analyse the experiences of those who choose to self-track using a Fitbit and the constellation of barriers and facilitators (human and non-human) related to social class and gender that enable and constrain one's ability to use a Fitbit as intended. First, we examine the social class assumptions of Fitbit as a risk management tool in the workplace, illustrating what elements must come together - both human and non-human - to create an environment that enables walking throughout the workday to combat the risks of sedentary work. Second, we explore the ways that Fitbit users 'confessed' to their past inactivity and how gendered home labour differently enables and constrains some of the users' abilities to act on their confessions. Ultimately, one's ability to engage in the idealized use of the Fitbit in the minds of its users, or what we term the 'Fitbit subject assemblage', is structured by numerous material and social factors that must be taken into account when examining the mechanics of power in fitness tracking.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.