Thinking Sociologically by Zygmunt Bauman;Tim May; & Tim May

Author:Zygmunt Bauman;Tim May; & Tim May
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781118959978
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Published: 2019-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

In Pursuit of Health and Fitness

Is all this healthy? If we are asked what we want to achieve when we take measures to protect our body, to train it and to exercise, we may well answer that we want to be more healthy and fit. Both aims are commendable. The problem is that they are different and sometimes at cross‐purposes with each other. The idea of health, for instance, assumes that there is a norm that a human body should meet, with deviations being signs of imbalance, disease, or danger. Norms have their top and bottom limits and so we can say that going over the upper level is, in principle, as dangerous and undesirable as falling below the lower level; for example, too high and too low blood pressure. Both possibilities call for medical intervention: for example, doctors are worried when there are too many leucocytes in the blood, but they also may exhibit concern when there are too few of them.

We remain healthy if, and only if, we remain around a norm. The idea of health suggests the preservation of a “constant state,” with allowances for small fluctuations over time. Since we know, by and large, what the normal state is and so can measure it with some degree of precision, we know what to strive for as an “end state.” Taking care of our health may be quite time‐consuming and aggravating and it often generates a good deal of anxiety. However, there are guidelines in terms of what we can know and how far we need to go and so there may be a degree of contentment in our labor. Once we are back within an “acceptable norm,” we can be reassured that this is indeed the case by comparing the indices of our body, its functions with the statistics of the “averages” for our age.

Fitness is another matter. Whilst patriarchal relations have rendered the body to be distrusted due to its proximity to nature that is apparently at odds with the rational world of men, fitness becomes a public spectacle. It is seen in such places as gyms, streets, pitches, courts, tracks, and stadiums and is big business. There might be a bottom line according to age, but the sky is the limit as far as the top line is concerned. It is about transgressing norms, not adhering to them. Gyms are full of mottos urging their members to excel. For Loïc Wacquant in his ethnography of boxing, Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer, it became a place of molding the body into both a shield and a weapon to be deployed against an opponent. Yet health, in general, is not oriented to such goals and is about keeping the body in a normal, functioning condition in order to work, earn a living, be mobile, engage in some kind of social life, communicate with other people, and use the facilities that the society provides to serve various life tasks. When it comes to fitness

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