How various ‘cultures of fitness’ shape subjective experiences of growing older
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11201149 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Susan Paulson (City, University of London, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2005 |
| Volume | 25 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 229-244 |
| Publication date | 2005-03-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Ageing and Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0144-686X • E-ISSN: 1469-1779 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0144686x04002971 |
| OpenAlex | W2165669739 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 22 |
Is growing older a process of decline or of keeping active? Foucauldian theory suggests particular regimes of fitness will discipline ageing bodies in distinctively different ways. This paper reports a comparative ethnographic and qualitative interview study of a ‘fitness exercise’ and a ‘dance exercise’ group for the over-fifties. The findings demonstrate the ways in which contradictory cultural discourses in the fitness training curricula are associated with different subjective experiences of physical and psychological ageing. The ‘fitness exercise’ group focused on individual fitness levels for the ageing body in the terms of the cultural discourses of health and physiology. The ‘dance exercise’ group focused on the graceful ageing body in the terms of the cultural discourses of the psycho-social benefits of movement in relation to others. The study combined phenomenological and social constructionist dimensions, and exemplifies the ways in which the subjective experience of the ageing body may become embedded in particular cultures of fitness
Active ageing · Ageing · Dance · Ethnography · Older people · Physical fitness · Sociocultural evolution · Sociology · Anthropology · Diversity and Impact of Dance · Medicine · Psychology · Social Psychology · Gerontology
Leisure as resistance within the context of dementia
Senior Women’s Dance
The Embodied Experiences of Injured Ultra-Runners
Body, Meanings, and Physical Exercise in Older Adults
Exergaming in retirement centres and the integration of media and physical literacies
Beauty is more than skin deep.” An ethnographic study of beauty therapists and older women
You feel like people are looking at you and laughing”
“Life Without Line Dancing and the Other Activities Would be Too Dreadful to Imagine”
Recreational burlesque and the aging female body
Analysing exceptions within qualitative data
Older adults’ lifelong embodied experiences of leisure time aquatic physical activity in the United Kingdom
Pleasurable challenges
Use it or lose it
The role of fiction in (mis)representing later life leisure activities
Cognitive decline and distinction
(In/Ex)clusive fitness cultures
Languages of othering and cultural hybridity. Transnational cultures of ageing in the context of return to the Azores
Not just old and sick – the ‘will to health’ in later life
Aquatic antiques
"Yeah, and What's the Problem?" Embodiment, Cultural Practices and Working out in a Dutch Gym
Older Women and Everyday Talk about the Ageing Body
When I'm in the Garden I Can Create My Own Paradise
| Citations per year | 1.1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2006 - 2024 (19) |
| Highly cited | No |