Episode 6 - "I’m not running. I’m chasing my youth"

Fitness activities on the surface have a lot to do with health and looks, they are also very much embedded in marketplace logics and consumer culture. In this episode, Alev and Anuja and guests reveal how fitness culture is a significant part of a modern individual's everyday activities. They look into extreme forms of sports such as CrossFit and the Danish runner's race "Extreme Man's Smell" as well as fitness activities during Covid-19, and discuss the joys as well as tensions of working out.Guest appearances in this episode: Karsten Prinds, Producer at this show.Csongor Füleki, a student in the Bachelor's program of Market and Management Anthropology at SDU. Anil Isisag, an Assistant Professor of Marketing at EMLyon Business School.Notes and reading suggestions:Foundational Texts that help contextualize “the body” within capitalism / late modernity:Blackman, L. (2020). The body: The key concepts. Routledge.Featherstone, M. (1982). The body in consumer culture. Theory, culture & society, 1(2), 18-33.Featherstone, M., & Turner, B. S. (1995). Body & society: An introduction. Body & Society, 1(1), 1-12.Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age. Stanford university press.Lasch, C. (2018). The culture of narcissism: American life in an age of diminishing expectations. WW Norton & Company.Slater, D. (1997) Consumer Culture and Modenity. Cambridge: Polity PressTurner, B. S. (1996). Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory. London: SageFitness Cultures & Body Work - more general:Andreasson, J., & Johansson, T. (2014). The Fitness Revolution: Historical Transformations in the Global Gym and Fitness Culture. Sport science review, 23(3-4), 91-112.Hakim, J. (2015). 'Fit is the new rich': male embodiment in the age of austerity. Soundings, 61(61), 84-94.Kristensen, D. B., & Ruckenstein, M. (2018). Co-evolving with self-tracking technologies. New Media & Society, 20(10), 3624-3640.Kristensen, D. B., & Prigge, C. (2018). Human/technology associations in self-tracking practices. In Self-tracking (pp. 43-59). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.Maguire, J. S. (2007). Fit for consumption: Sociology and the business of fitness. Routledge.Martschukat, J. (2019). The age of fitness: the power of ability in recent American history. Rethinking History, 23(2), 157-174.McKenzie, S. (2013). Getting physical: The rise of fitness culture in America. Lawrence: university press of kansas.Pedersen, P. V., & Tjørnhøj-Thomsen, T. (2017). Bodywork and bodily capital among youth using fitness gyms. Journal of Youth Studies, 20(4), 430-445.Sassatelli, R. (1999). Fitness gyms and the local organization of experience. Sociological research online, 4(3), 96-112.Sassatelli, R. (1999). Interaction order and beyond: A field analysis of body culture within fitness gyms. Body & Society, 5(2-3), 227-248.Sassatelli, R., 2003. Beyond health and beauty: A critical perspective on fitness culture. In Women’s Minds, Women’s Bodies (pp. 77-88). Palgrave Macmillan, London.Sassatelli, R. (2010). Fitness culture: gyms and the commercialisation of discipline and fun. Palgrave Macmillan“Extreme” Fitness Activities:Andreasson, J., & Johansson, T. (2019). Triathlon Bodies in Motion: Reconceptualizing Feelings of Pain, Nausea and Disgust in the Ironman Triathlon. Body & Society, 25(2), 119-145.Gillett, J., & White, P. G. (1992). Male bodybuilding and the reassertion of hegemonic masculinity: A critical feminist perspective. Play & Culture.Klein, A. M. (1986). Pumping irony: Crisis and contradiction in bodybuilding. Sociology of Sport journal, 3(2), 112-133.

Om Podcasten

In this podcast, researchers Anuja Pradhan and Alev Kuruoglu from the University of Southern Denmark take a critical look at everything and anything related to our consumer society. They will be talking to researchers and students about fun things like coffee, tv and fitness cultures.