From Social Problem to Personal Issue: The Language of Lifestyle

Howell, Jeremy W.; Ingham, Alan G.

doi:10.1080/09502380152390535

Cited by 52 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Taken together, these results show the extent to which participants recycled healthist discourses, including the dominant discourse of obesity. Numerous scholars have criticized such a discourse insofar as it conceptualizes health as an individual and moral responsibility (Crawford, 1980;White et al, 1995;Howell and Ingham, 2001). Like them, we are concerned with the emphasis on the individual.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The politics of evidence on ‘domestic terrorists’: Obesity discourses and their effects

2010

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The recent construction of an 'obesity epidemic' has been fueled by epidemiologically-based studies recuperated by the media and suggesting the rapid acceleration of obesity rates in the Western world. Studies linking obesity to ill-health have also exploded with more recipes on how to wage 'a war' on obesity and dispose of 'domestic terrorists.' In this paper, we assert that the fabrication of 'evidence' in obesity research constitutes a good example of micro-fascism at play in the contemporary scientific arena. Favoring a particular ideology and excluding alternative forms of knowledge, obesity scientists have established a dominant 'obesity discourse' within which obese and 'at-risk' bodies are constructed as lazy and expensive bodies that should be submitted to disciplinary technologies (for example, surveillance), expert investigation and regulation. Using a poststructuralist approach, we examine the politics of evidence in obesity science and explore the connections between obesity discourses and the ways in which health and the body are discursively constructed by Canadian youth. Social Theory & Health (2010) 8, 259-279. doi:10.1057/sth.2009 Keywords: body; obesity; health; youth; discourse analysis; poststructuralist theory Obesity and 'Evidence'Few North Americans will have escaped the avalanche of scientific and public comments about obesity in recent years. Escalating concerns over an 'obesity epidemic' have been fueled by the epidemiological, physiological and medical r

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The politics of evidence on ‘domestic terrorists’: Obesity discourses and their effects

2010

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“…Research has established the importance of such coverage in communicating disease risk, showcasing medical breakthroughs and framing professional concerns (Finaly & Faulkner, 2005;Clarke & Everest, 2006;Kline, 2006;Salleh, 2008;Wallis & Nerlich, 2005;Wilson et al, 2004). Coverage also promotes the importance of personal behaviour change in maintaining health and preventing illness, particularly in relation to lifestyle 'diseases' such as obesity (Howell & Ingham, 2001). Such stories reflect a moral obligation to be healthy based on notions of individual responsibility for health (Hodgetts, Bolam & Stephens, 2005).…”

Section: Health In the Mediapolismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Even when wider social determinants of health such as crime or deprivation are present, they are dismissed as politically motivated distractions (Hodgetts, Masters & Robertson, 2004). In short, coverage tends to depoliticize health by emphasizing individual responsibility and biomedical technologies (Davidson, Hunt & Kitzinger, 2003;Hodgetts & Chamberlain, 2006;Howell & Ingham, 2001;Thorson, 2006).…”

Section: Health In the Mediapolismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Health journalists typically focus more on individual than social factors as sources of health disparities (Gasher et al, 2007). Illness is often framed as a personal, rather than a social problem (Howell & Ingham, 2001). This orientation in coverage is particularly important if we accept that rather than simply drawing on and reflecting public understandings, news media are central to how health and illness are understood and addressed in society.…”

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Civic journalism meets civic social science: foregrounding social determinants in health coverage

Hodgetts

2012

revistacomsoc

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Abstract:Many of the intricacies of health feature regularly in news reports depicting, medical practices, specific diseases, breakthroughs in treatment, and lifestyle-orientated interventions. Despite social scientists also demonstrating the importance of economic prosperity, community cohesion, stress, material hardship and stigma for health, such social determinants are often absent from health news. The inclusion of social determinants of health in coverage is crucial for ensuring a vibrant public sphere for health. This article draws on the example of street homelessness as a pressing societal health concern in order to explore the potential of collaborations between civic-orientated journalists, social scientists and marginalized groups. Such collaborations are central to the production of a civic-oriented form of health journalism that extends and repoliticizes the present scope of news coverage.

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“…With the exception of times of war, the meaning of fitness over the twentieth century was predominantly cast in terms of individual-rather than social-improvement, and since the 1970s the concept of fitness has increasingly narrowed to a commercialized lifestyle, an individualized project of self-improvement to be carried out in one"s leisure time, through the consumption of exercise programs and fitness goods (Smith Maguire, 2008). While goals may vary for specific exercises, the fitness lifestyle is represented as a general enhancement of health, appearance, and, ultimately, quality of life (Howell & Ingham, 2001). As such, the research from which this article is drawn conceptualizes fitness not as a commercial industry but as a commercial cultural field (Bourdieu 1984(Bourdieu , 1993Ferguson, 1998;Laberge & Kay, 2002): a network of sites, texts, producers, and consumers that generates practices of exercise and meanings of the exercised body.…”

Section: The Fitness Field and Leisurementioning

confidence: 99%

Leisure and the Obligation of Self‐Work: An Examination of the Fitness Field

Maguire

2008

Leisure Studies

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Abstract:This article examines the cultural field of fitness as a network of producers, consumers, products and practices that has developed around the care of the body through physical exercise. Drawing on a thematic text analysis of US exercise manuals, the paper focuses on how the commercial fitness field naturalizes associations between physical exercise and leisure, and between leisure and selfwork. In particular, the analysis examines three themes and their relevance to our broader understanding of leisure in contemporary consumer society: the management of leisure time; the use of leisure for self-investment strategies; and the promotion of consumption as the framework for leisure and an accompanying notion of pleasure. The fitness field casts light on how leisure more generally is constructed as a sphere of obligations to make productive use of one"s time, to improve one"s body and self, and to do so through the wares of the consumer marketplace. The cultural imaginary of leisure as a time of freedom from work and responsibility is thus recast, in an age of individualization, as a time of freedom to accomplish the work of self-production.

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From Social Problem to Personal Issue: The Language of Lifestyle

Cited by 52 publications

References 9 publications

The politics of evidence on ‘domestic terrorists’: Obesity discourses and their effects

The politics of evidence on ‘domestic terrorists’: Obesity discourses and their effects

Civic journalism meets civic social science: foregrounding social determinants in health coverage

Leisure and the Obligation of Self‐Work: An Examination of the Fitness Field

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