The piety of optimization
The rhetoric of health awareness in ParticipAction and Fitbit
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4860805 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Loren Gaudet (0000-0002-9955-2117, The University of British Columbia Faculty of Arts, Canada, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 27 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 3-19 |
| Publication date | 2023-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Health An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health Illness and Medicine (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1363-4593 • E-ISSN: 1461-7196 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1363459320988886 |
| PMID | 33541121 |
| OpenAlex | W3126346939 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 35 |
This article uses the tools of rhetorical study to investigate how health awareness, as both a concept and a set of beliefs that reinforce ideals of health, permeates everyday life and affects ways of being. I explore how health awareness is communicated through both public health and commercial marketing campaigns, and argue that as the sources of information change, so too do the ideas of health that we are asked to be aware of. Through an analysis of the websites of ParticipACTION, a publicly funded health and fitness campaign, and Fitbit, a corporation that produces wearable technologies, I show that these organizations provide their audiences with instructions for self-conduct in the pursuit of health through the piety that time is a resource to be managed. Through this piety, ParticipACTION and Fitbit's websites each reify an altar of health where health is represented as a socially and physically fitter (optimized) self, always just out of reach and attainable in the future. I conclude with a call for critical descriptions of health awareness to move beyond the explanatory power of neoliberalization of health, and turn to the work of Rachel Sanders, Annmarie Mol, and Donna Haraway as possible avenues for resisting optimization
Aesthetics · Corporation · Piety · Political science · Public health · Public relations · Rhetoric · Rhetorical question · Sociology · Computer Science · Empathy and Medical Education · Law · Medicine · Nursing · Obesity and Health Practices · Philosophy · Rhetoric and Communication Studies
The Economization of Life
The Logic of Care
Permanence and change
Biopolitics and the 'Obesity Epidemic'
Cruel Optimism
Ordinary Affects
The Politics of Life Itself
Networked
Understanding health promotion in a neoliberal climate and the making of health conscious citizens
Apps as Artefacts
Guiding Girls
M-health and health promotion
Find Your Fit”
Governing the child-citizen
Fit for prosumption
No Future
Evidence-based lifestyle interventions for obesity and Type 2 diabetes
Anticipation
The neoliberal diet and inequality in the United States
Self-tracking in the Digital Era
Embodied Action, Enacted Bodies
Training to self-care
Self-tracking, health and medicine
Rethinking Fat
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 3 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |