This book is the first comprehensive, empirically grounded study of fitness culture. It is based on empirical research in two countries, Italy and Great Britain, and draws on the existing literature on fitness culture as a global phenomena. The book aims to go beyond approaches to fitness which consider it functional to commercial images of the body, commercially mediated norms of masculinity and femininity, social stratification and the distinction requirements of certain sections of the population that occupy a particular position in consumer capitalism such as cultural intermediaries. These grand theoretical perspectives forget that cultures are grounded in the ordinary accomplishment of materiality and practice. They resort almost exclusively to determinants external to the field of fitness practice (gender, class habitus, consumerism) and consider consumers’ meanings and actions ancillary to, and largely determined by, producers and the fitness industry. This book instead seriously considers the idea that fields or worlds of practice – to use Becker’s terminology - are relatively separated realities, which develop their own internal meanings and dispositions, rewards and frustrations and that consumers actively participate in the consolidation of such fields. I show that fields or worlds of practices such as fitness gyms generate habitus and forms of consumer capital that can become relevant beyond the field. In the case of fitness, a relatively new sub-field, the barriers between producers and consumers are, for example, still low, and both meanings and competences acquired as consumers may be transformed into a professional career even relatively later in life, as many biographies of gym instructors and personal trainers in fact shows. More broadly, positioned at the crossroad of a variety of discourses and practices – sport and leisure, medicine and health, commercial culture and fashion - the world of the fitness gym is continuously in the making through participants’ articulation of its significance and boundaries

Fitness culture : gyms and the commercialisation of discipline and fun / R. Sassatelli. - Basingstoke : Palgrave MacMillan, 2010. - ISBN 9780230507494.

Fitness culture : gyms and the commercialisation of discipline and fun

R. Sassatelli
Primo
2010

Abstract

This book is the first comprehensive, empirically grounded study of fitness culture. It is based on empirical research in two countries, Italy and Great Britain, and draws on the existing literature on fitness culture as a global phenomena. The book aims to go beyond approaches to fitness which consider it functional to commercial images of the body, commercially mediated norms of masculinity and femininity, social stratification and the distinction requirements of certain sections of the population that occupy a particular position in consumer capitalism such as cultural intermediaries. These grand theoretical perspectives forget that cultures are grounded in the ordinary accomplishment of materiality and practice. They resort almost exclusively to determinants external to the field of fitness practice (gender, class habitus, consumerism) and consider consumers’ meanings and actions ancillary to, and largely determined by, producers and the fitness industry. This book instead seriously considers the idea that fields or worlds of practice – to use Becker’s terminology - are relatively separated realities, which develop their own internal meanings and dispositions, rewards and frustrations and that consumers actively participate in the consolidation of such fields. I show that fields or worlds of practices such as fitness gyms generate habitus and forms of consumer capital that can become relevant beyond the field. In the case of fitness, a relatively new sub-field, the barriers between producers and consumers are, for example, still low, and both meanings and competences acquired as consumers may be transformed into a professional career even relatively later in life, as many biographies of gym instructors and personal trainers in fact shows. More broadly, positioned at the crossroad of a variety of discourses and practices – sport and leisure, medicine and health, commercial culture and fashion - the world of the fitness gym is continuously in the making through participants’ articulation of its significance and boundaries
2010
Settore SPS/08 - Sociologia dei Processi Culturali e Comunicativi
Settore SPS/07 - Sociologia Generale
Settore SPS/09 - Sociologia dei Processi economici e del Lavoro
Fitness culture : gyms and the commercialisation of discipline and fun / R. Sassatelli. - Basingstoke : Palgrave MacMillan, 2010. - ISBN 9780230507494.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/2434/149784
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