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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 F\xfcleki, 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 \u201cthe body\u201d 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 Press

Turner, B. S. (1996). Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory. London: Sage


Fitness 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., & Tj\xf8rnh\xf8j-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\u2019s Minds, Women\u2019s Bodies (pp. 77-88). Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Sassatelli, R. (2010). Fitness culture: gyms and the commercialisation of discipline and fun. Palgrave Macmillan


\u201cExtreme\u201d 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.

Scott, R., Cayla, J., & Cova, B. (2017). Selling pain to the saturated self. Journal of Consumer Research, 44(1), 22-43.

Weedon, G. (2015). Camaraderie reincorporated: Tough Mudder and the extended distribution of the social. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 39(6), 431-454.


CrossFit:

Couture, J. (2019). \u201cProtecting the Gift\u201d: Risk, Parental (Ir) responsibility, and CrossFit Kids Magazine. Sociology of Sport Journal, 36(1), 77-86.

Dawson, M. C. (2017). CrossFit: Fitness cult or reinventive institution?. International review for the sociology of sport, 52(3), 361-379.

Edmonds, S. E. (2020). Geographies of (cross) fitness: an ethnographic case study of a CrossFit Box. Qualitative research in sport, exercise and health, 12(2), 192-206.

Hejtmanek, K. R. (2020). Fitness Fanatics: Exercise as Answer to Pending Zombie Apocalypse in Contemporary America. American Anthropologist, 122(4), 864-875.

McCarthy, B. (2021). Reinvention Through CrossFit: Branded Transformation Documentaries. Communication & Sport, 9(1), 150-165.


Other Branded and (G)local Fitness Cultures:

Andreasson, J., & Johansson, T. (2016). \u2018Doing for group exercise what McDonald's did for hamburgers\u2019: Les Mills, and the fitness professional as global traveller. Sport, Education and Society, 21(2), 148-165.

Askegaard, S., & Eckhardt, G. M. (2012). Glocal yoga: Re-appropriation in the Indian consumptionscape. Marketing Theory, 12(1), 45-60.

Ertimur, B., & Coskuner-Balli, G. (2015). Navigating the institutional logics of markets: Implications for strategic brand management. Journal of Marketing, 79(2), 40-61.

Powers, D. and Greenwell, D.M., 2017. Branded fitness: Exercise and promotional culture. Journal of Consumer Culture, 17(3), pp.523-541.


Journalism on contemporary body & fitness cultures:

Abad-Santos (2020) \u201cHow Soulcycle Lost Its Soul\u201d
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22195549/soulcycle-decline-reopening-bullying-bike-explained

Ehrenreich, B. (2018). Body Work: The curiously self-punishing rites of fitness culture. The Baffler, (38), 6-10.

Katz, D. (1995) Jack Lalanne is Still an Animal:
https://www.outsideonline.com/1830081/jack-lalanne-still-animal

Mowbray, N. (2018) \u201cIt's intoxicating \u2013 I became obsessed': has fitness gone too far?\u201d
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/sep/30/has-extreme-fitness-gone-too-far-instagram-gym-classes


A sampling of some marketplace products & advice on home exercise:

Goldfarb, A. (2020) \u201cYou Can Take Care of Yourself in Coronavirus Quarantine or Isolation, Starting Right Now\u201d, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/style/self-care/isolation-exercise-meditation-coronavirus.html