The biopolitics of inspiration
Governing new public health through strategies of physical activity
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6430211 |
|---|---|
| Authors | David Ekholm (0000-0002-6252-9220, Center for Local Government Studies, Department of Culture and Society Linköping University Linkoping Sweden), Elin Svensson (0000-0002-3122-6139, Center for Local Government Studies, Department of Culture and Society Linköping University Linkoping Sweden) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Publication date | 2025-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Journal of Social Welfare (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1369-6866 • E-ISSN: 1468-2397 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/ijsw.70047 |
| OpenAlex | W4415218952 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 29 |
This article examines the promotion of a regional strategy of physical activity for public health in Sweden. Based on focus group interviews, we explore the rationality of governing public health through the strategy and consider how the strategy and its rationality become intertwined in contemporary forms of governing welfare. The strategy operates through the dissemination of good examples and spotlights the role of various forms of cross‐sector and inter‐agency cooperation, underpinned by notions of trust and complementarity. We analyze the non‐coercive and subtle modes of power, in terms of how facilitation and inspiration are assumed to operate. We conclude that the policy discourse promoted forms a biopolitics of inspiration . This rationality provides an intelligible response to a range of policy problems, of how the public health of the population can be governed in a time marked by social inequality, financial austerity, and decentralized and constitutionally limited government
Global Public Health Policies and Epidemiology · Obesity and Health Practices · Public Health Policies and Education
The Social Determinants of Health
Foucault and Political Reason
Governing through lifestyle—Lalonde and the biopolitical management of public health in Canada
Governing people's lives
The Subject and Power
Foucault, Health and Medicine
Powers of Freedom
The potential power of social policy programmes
The flight from universalism
Governing the child-citizen
Governing of the nation
Austerity through rescaling and layering in the Swedish welfare state
Discourses of lifelong learning
In defence of (social) democracy
Twenty-five Years After the Ottawa Charter
Security, Territory, Population
Ethnographies of Neoliberal Governmentalities
Governing at a distance
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |