Bodies fit for consumption: The cultural production of the fitness field.
Item
-
Title
-
Bodies fit for consumption: The cultural production of the fitness field.
-
Identifier
-
AAI3063885
-
identifier
-
3063885
-
Creator
-
Smith, Jennifer Beryl.
-
Contributor
-
Adviser: Sharon Zukin
-
Date
-
2002
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Sociology, Social Structure and Development | Health Sciences, Recreation
-
Abstract
-
In the United States, fitness industries have grown significantly since the 1970s. This dissertation examines fitness as a cultural field: a network of sites, products, texts, producers, and consumers organized around working on the body through exercise. The analysis draws on Pierre Bourdieu's concept of the cultural field to examine the ways in which the social and political-economic conditions of the late 20th century made possible the production of fitness consumers and producers. The empirical focus is on the U.S. fitness industry of the past thirty years, concentrating on commercial health clubs, fitness magazines and manuals, and personal trainers. The research combines discourse analysis (of magazines, manuals, and market research reports) with interviews with fitness practitioners (personal trainers, health club managers, and fitness magazine advertising sales associates).;The fitness field's emergence is connected to a long-standing physical culture in the U.S., in which exercise has been promoted as a way for individuals to improve themselves. In the 1970s, this exercising tradition was recast by new health promotion strategies that focused on individuals' responsibility to take up "healthy" lifestyles, a newly intensified service economy that placed increasing emphasis on individuals' physical appearance, and the new associations, for women and others, between physical and political empowerment. Since the 1980s, the fitness field's institutional foundations have undergone tremendous growth and consolidation: commercial health clubs established themselves as the taken-for-granted sites for the consumption of fitness; fitness magazines and manuals instructed consumers in the practices, criteria, and accessories that define a fitness lifestyle; and personal trainers emerged as a cadre of professional fitness producers, marketing expert fitness knowledge as a personal service.;The implications for fitness field participants ultimately concern social, not physical, fitness: the fit individual is a competent social actor who understands the body as an enterprise. The "lessons" of the fitness field involve a naturalization of leisure time as a sphere of obligations to minimize one's (health) risks and maximize one's (market) potential, a representation of the body as a site of work, self-control, and reward, and an education in the consumer fitness lifestyle as the most appropriate pattern of self-investment.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
