scholarly journals Physical Cultures of Stigmatisation: Health Policy & Social Class

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Rich ◽  
Laura De Pian ◽  
Jessica Francombe-Webb
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Health Policy ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
The Social ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Obesity Discourse ◽  
Cultural Tensions ◽  
The Uk

In recent years, the increasing regulation of people's health and bodies has been exacerbated by a contemporary ‘obesity discourse’ centred on eating less, exercising more and losing weight. This paper contributes to the growing body of work critically examining this discourse and highlights the way physical activity and health policy directed at ‘tackling’ the obesity ‘crisis’ in the UK articulates numerous powerful discourses that operate to legitimise and privilege certain ways of knowing and usher forth certain desirable forms of embodiment. This has given greater impetus to further define the role of physical activity, sport and physical education as instruments for addressing public health agendas. It is argued that these policies have particular implications for social class through their constitution of (un)healthy and (in)active ‘working class’ bodies. One of the most powerful forms of stigmatisation and discrimination circulating within contemporary health emerges when the social and cultural tensions of social class intersect with obesity discourse and its accompanying imperatives related to physical activity and diet. This raises some important questions about the future of sport and physical activity as it is shaped by the politics of broader health agendas and our position within this terrain as ‘critics’. Consequently, the latter part of the paper offers reflections on the nature and utility of our (and others’) social science critique in the politics of obesity and articulates the need for crossing disciplinary and sectoral borders.

Young People’s Embodiment of Physical Activity: The Role of the ‘Pedagogized’ Family

2012 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 210-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Symeon Dagkas ◽  
Thomas Quarmby
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Family Environment ◽  
Strong Influence ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
Young Adolescents ◽  
The Family ◽  
Personal Histories ◽  
The Uk

Drawing from Bourdieu, this study investigated the multifaceted influences that operate in and through combinations of family and social class with regard to the embodiment of physical activity in young adolescents in the UK. The findings suggest that pedagogical practices within the family environment are crucial to the development of embodied dispositions toward physical activity and health. The results illustrate that the family operates as a “pedagogical” field where personal histories and prevailing social circumstances exert a strong influence on children’s embodied physicalities.

scholarly journals Solidarity with disabled people in times of crisis: A comparative analysis of Italy and the UK

2021 ◽  
pp. 026858092199450
Author(s):  
Nicola Maggini ◽  
Tom Montgomery ◽  
Simone Baglioni
Keyword(s):  
Social Trust ◽  
Important Determinant ◽  
Social Embeddedness ◽  
Disabled People ◽  
The Social ◽  
Religious Piety ◽  
Active Nature ◽  
The One ◽  
The Uk

Against the background of crisis and cuts, citizens can express solidarity with groups in various ways. Using novel survey data this article explores the attitudes and behaviours of citizens in their expressions of solidarity with disabled people and in doing so illuminates the differences and similarities across two European contexts: Italy and the UK. The findings reveal pools of solidarity with disabled people across both countries that have on the one hand similar foundations such as the social embeddedness and social trust of citizens, while on the other hand contain some differences, such as the more direct and active nature of solidarity in Italy compared to the UK and the role of religiosity as an important determinant, particularly in Italy. Across both countries the role of ‘deservingness’ was key to understanding solidarity, and the study’s conclusions raise questions about a solidarity embedded by a degree of paternalism and even religious piety.

scholarly journals Common Diseases and Some Demographic Characteristics among Saudi Women

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (12) ◽  
pp. 94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmed Abdulrahman Al-Haramlah ◽  
Fawziah Al-Bakr ◽  
Haniah Merza
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Health Centers ◽  
Saudi Women ◽  
Number Of Children ◽  
Common Diseases ◽  
The Social ◽  
Study Results ◽  
The Common ◽  
Obesity Hypertension

<p class="apa">This study aimed to detect the common diseases among Saudi women and their relationship with the level of physical activity and some variables. This study was applied to 1233 Saudi woman in different regions of the Kingdom, and adopted to explore the common diseases: obesity, hypertension, diabetes, cholesterol and asthma.</p><p class="apa">The study results showed the existence of a statistically significant relationship between the common diseases among Saudi women and the variables of educational level, the nature of the profession, the social status, the justification of the practice of physical activity, the rate of participation in physical activity per week, the practice of physical activity in relation to asthma and the number of children with regard to obesity.</p><p class="apa">The study provided a number of recommendations including: the need to strengthen the role of culture in promoting physical activity by women, through health education via the health centers in the Kingdom.</p>

scholarly journals Long COVID and the role of physical activity: a qualitative study

BMJ Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. e047632
Author(s):  
Helen Humphreys ◽  
Laura Kilby ◽  
Nik Kudiersky ◽  
Robert Copeland
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Telephone Interviews ◽  
Semistructured Interviews ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Insight Into

ObjectivesTo explore the lived experience of long COVID with particular focus on the role of physical activity.DesignQualitative study using semistructured interviews.Participants18 people living with long COVID (9 men, 9 women; aged between 18–74 years; 10 white British, 3 white Other, 3 Asian, 1 black, 1 mixed ethnicity) recruited via a UK-based research interest database for people with long COVID.SettingTelephone interviews with 17 participants living in the UK and 1 participant living in the USA.ResultsFour themes were generated. Theme 1 describes how participants struggled with drastically reduced physical function, compounded by the cognitive and psychological effects of long COVID. Theme 2 highlights challenges associated with finding and interpreting advice about physical activity that was appropriately tailored. Theme 3 describes individual approaches to managing symptoms including fatigue and ‘brain fog’ while trying to resume and maintain activities of daily living and other forms of exercise. Theme 4 illustrates the battle with self-concept to accept reduced function (even temporarily) and the fear of permanent reduction in physical and cognitive ability.ConclusionsThis study provides insight into the challenges of managing physical activity alongside the extended symptoms associated with long COVID. Findings highlight the need for greater clarity and tailoring of physical activity-related advice for people with long COVID and improved support to resume activities important to individual well-being.

scholarly journals Migration infrastructures and the production of migrants’ irregularity in Japan and the United Kingdom

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nando Sigona ◽  
Jotaro Kato ◽  
Irina Kuznetsova
Keyword(s):  
Legal Status ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Legal Violence ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Social ◽  
Access And Quality ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThe article examines the migration infrastructures and pathways through which migrants move into, through and out of irregular status in Japan and the UK and how these infrastructures uniquely shape their migrant experiences of irregularity at key stages of their migration projects.Our analysis brings together two bodies of migration scholarship, namely critical work on the social and legal production of illegality and the impact of legal violence on the lives of immigrants with precarious legal status, and on the role of migration infrastructures in shaping mobility pathways.Drawing upon in-depth qualitative interviews with irregular and precarious migrants in Japan and the UK collected over a ten-year period, this article develops a three-pronged analysis of the infrastructures of irregularity, focusing on infrastructures of entry, settlement and exit, casting a comparative light on the mechanisms that produce precarious and expendable migrant lives in relation to access to labour and labour conditions, access and quality of housing and law enforcement, and how migrants adapt, cope, resist or eventually are overpowered by them.

scholarly journals The role of physical activity enjoyment in the pathways from the social and physical environments to physical activity of early adolescent girls

2018 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 6-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth L. Budd ◽  
Amy McQueen ◽  
Amy A. Eyler ◽  
Debra Haire-Joshu ◽  
Wendy F. Auslander ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Adolescent Girls ◽  
Early Adolescent ◽  
Physical Environments ◽  
The Social ◽  
Activity Enjoyment

scholarly journals Urban Adolescence: The Role of Neighbourhood Greenspace in Mental Well-Being

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie A. E. Mueller ◽  
Eirini Flouri
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Urban Adolescents ◽  
Negative Mood ◽  
Antisocial Behaviour ◽  
Positive Mood ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Mental Well Being

Mental health and well-being in adolescence are associated with many short- and long-term outcomes. The evidence suggests that greenspace may play a role in adolescents' mental well-being, but we do not know much about the specifics of this link. In this paper, we investigated the role of other factors in the association. In a cross-sectional study, we investigated the role of neighbourhood greenspace in emotional and behavioural outcomes in 11-year-old urban adolescents participating in the UK Millennium Cohort Study (n = 4,534). We used linear regression models to test for an association of greenspace with self-esteem, happiness, positive mood, negative mood, and antisocial behaviour. We also investigated effect modification/moderation by garden access, physical activity, and perceived area safety. We did not find a main effect of greenspace, but we did find interaction effects. First, in adolescents without a garden, higher levels of greenspace were associated with lower levels of self-esteem and positive mood. Second, in adolescents who reported lower levels of physical activity, higher levels of greenspace were associated with lower levels of negative mood. Third, in adolescents who perceived their areas to be unsafe, higher levels of greenspace were associated with higher levels of antisocial behaviour. Our findings suggest that merely more greenspace in the neighbourhood may not be sufficient to promote the mental well-being of urban adolescents in the UK. However, greenspace does seem to have an influence under certain conditions which should be investigated further in future studies.

scholarly journals Revisiting Health in Colonial Bengal: A Literary Overview (1880 -1930)

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (11) ◽  
pp. 374-377
Author(s):  
Tinni Goswami Bhattacharya
Keyword(s):  
Social Economic ◽  
The Other ◽  
Vernacular Literature ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
British Raj ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cultural Tensions ◽  
The One ◽  
Active Link

The essential theme of this paper is to highlight the condition of health and hygiene in the British Bengal from the perspective of official documents and vernacular writings, with special emphasis on the journals and periodicals. The fatal effects of the epidemics like malaria and cholera, the insanitary condition of the rural Bengal and the cultivated indifference of the British Raj made the lives of the poor natives miserable and ailing. The authorities had a tendency to blame the colonized for their illiteracy and callousness, which became instrumental for the outbreak of the epidemics. On the other, in the late 19 th and the beginning of the 20th, the vernacular literature played the role of a catalyst in awakening health awareness, highlighting the issues related with ill health, insanitation and malnourishment. More importantly, it became an active link between the society and culture on the one hand, and health and people on the other. The present researcher wants to highlight these opposite trajectories of mentalities with a different connotation. The ideologies of the Raj and the native political aspirations often reflected in the colonial writings, where the year 1880 was considered as a landmark in the field of public health policies. On the other, the dichotomy between the masters and the colonized took a prominent shape during 1930s. Within these fifty years; the health of the natives witnessed many upheavals grounded on the social, economic and cultural tensions.

We Are Not Free to Choose: Class Determinism in Zadie Smith’s NW

2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 385-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hui Wang
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Racial Oppression ◽  
Economic Exploitation ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
Zadie Smith ◽  
Divide And Rule ◽  
New Perspective

AbstractNW by Zadie Smith opens with a multicultural and multiracial scene and revolves around the crises in the lives of four people with longstanding connection to Northwest London. The Northwest London in NW is a besieged city, and the people therein could not see any possibility of getting out because the gate has been latched with the concept of social class. In NW, the social class is materialized as space, economic position and race. Geographically NW features the main areas of London, and considers the role of that city in shaping the consciousness of the major characters, a partly spatial configuring of identity. In addition, the major characters in NW also suffer from occupational exclusion and economic exploitation, which then lead to their lower-class position since social class is constructed in such a way that agents are distributed according to their positions in the statistical distribution based on the economic and cultural capital. Finally the racial discrimination encountered by the characters in NW shows that class relations shape the form that racial oppression takes. The racialization of class issues becomes a politically effective tool for the wealthy to divide and rule the lower classes. In NW, Smith thus has adopted a more political attitude than in her previous books, so the relatively new perspective of her fiction might be the attention she draws to the persistent obstacles to class crossing and the acknowledgment of the rigid lines that still define the social classes.

Society and the Observer

2020 ◽  
pp. 61-102
Author(s):  
Alex Belsey ◽  
Alex Belsey
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Journal Writing ◽  
British Society ◽  
Social Involvement ◽  
Social Differences ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Social ◽  
Lower Social Class

This chapter analyses how, in his wartime journal-writing, Keith Vaughan articulated the social differences and exclusions that he believed were preventing him from fully participating in British society. In his accounts of failing to connect with those around him, he romanticized his failures and dramatized his distance from others, thereby justifying his exclusion and ultimately ascribing himself the powerful (if lonely) role of observer – a position from which he could assert superiority over his fellow C.O.s and men of lower social class whilst representing them in his sketches, paintings, and bathing pictures. The first section of this chapter considers how Vaughan used the early volumes of his journal to record his difficulties in making contact with his fellow man and reinforce them through self-dramatization. The second section explores the strategies employed by Vaughan to emphasize his difference from other individuals and groups, particularly around his homosexuality and artistic inclinations, and therefore justify and maintain his distance from them. The third section argues that Vaughan constructed an empowering role that made use of his remove from male society: that of the observer, enabling him to laud his own powers of perception whilst evading the problems of social involvement and possible surveillance.

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