We live in the age of fitness. Hundreds of thousands of people run marathons and millions go jogging in local parks, work out in gyms, cycle, swim, or practice yoga. The vast majority are not engaged in competitive sport and are not trying to win any medals. They just want to get fit. Why this modern preoccupation with fitness? In this new book, Jürgen Martschukat traces the roots of our modern preoccupation with fitness back to the birth of modern societies in the eighteenth century, showing how the idea of fitness was interwoven with modernity’s emphasis on perpetual optimization and renewal. But it is only in the period since the 1970s, he argues, that the age of fitness truly emerged, as part and parcel of our contemporary neoliberal era. Neoliberalism enjoins individuals to work on themselves, to cultivate themselves in body and mind. Fitness becomes a guiding principle of social life, an era-defining network of discourses and practices that shape individuals’ actions and self-conceptions. The pursuit of fitness becomes a cultural repertoire that is deeply ingrained in our institutions and way of life. This wide-ranging book shows how deeply fitness is inscribed in modern societies, and how important fitness has become to success or failure, recognition or exclusion, in a society that sets great store by self-responsibility, performance, market, and competition. It will be of great value not only to those interested in sport and fitness, but also to anyone concerned with the conditions of success and failure in our societies today.
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Jürgen Martschukat. The Age of Fitness
CONTENTS
Guide
List of Illustrations
Pages
THE AGE OF FITNESS. HOW THE BODY CAME TO SYMBOLIZE SUCCESS AND ACHIEVEMENT
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION: THE AGE OF FITNESS
Notes
1 “FIT OR FAT”? FITNESS IN RECENT HISTORY AND THE PRESENT DAY. Cycling and self-tracking
Health, fitness, and fatness in neoliberal times
Eating “right” since the Me Decade
The “right amount” of exercise since the Me Decade
“Fit or fat?”
Notes
2 FITNESS: TRAJECTORIES OF A CONCEPT SINCE THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY “The eternal fitness of things”?
Fitness, Darwin, and the invention of inescapable competition
Fitness, difference, and political participation
Fitness in an era of crisis and war
Fitness and consumer culture
Notes
3 WORKING “Corporate fitness,” or: getting fit for work – Part I
Industrial recreation and company sports in the history of capitalism
The new class of white-collar workers
“Corporate fitness,” or: Getting fit for work – Part II
Breathlessness as par for the course
Notes
4 HAVING SEX “Performance plus” through the “phallus pill”
Hard at any age
The “impotence boom”
“Penis doping”
Electric belts, rejuvenating surgery, and the psychologization of sex in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
Things that make a difference
How Viagra makes masculinity
Sex in the age of fitness
Notes
5 FIGHTING. Fitness heroes I
Citizen-soldiers and national heroes
Moments of transition to a post-heroic era?
Fitness heroes II
“Our future as a species”
Notes
6 PRODUCTIVE, POTENT, AND READY TO FIGHT?
Notes
REFERENCES
INDEX
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
POLITY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
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JÜRGEN MARTSCHUKAT
TRANSLATED BY ALEX SKINNER
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Soya, and above all corn, emerged as crucial food products in the “age of cheap.” Particularly in the United States, the area under cultivation and the agricultural corporations (it would be wrong to speak of farms here) grew massively, productivity rose, and prices fell. Most of the harvest went to the meat industry as feed, while the remainder – often in the form of “high fructose corn syrup” – was used in all kinds of food products or was exported. Michael Pollan, one of the most vociferous and prolific critics of the food industry in the United States, refers to a “dilemma” facing the average American eater. Although consumers can choose from an abundance of different foods, almost all industrially processed products are based on corn in one way or another. Corn (like soy) is subsidized by the state, and is mechanically cultivated and harvested on huge industrialized “farms.” Other agricultural products such as peaches, strawberries, and lettuce still require a great deal of manual labor, though their production has also been industrialized and rationalized. At the same time, the food industry and the food trade have been among the leading sectors responsible for wage dumping since the 1970s. They have made a significant contribution to the overall decline in real wages, thus creating demand for their own low-cost products. Pollan even surmises that only cheap food has averted an even greater systemic crisis, namely widespread hunger, and thus a mass uprising.41 In the United States, however, most writers and activists no longer refer to hunger but to “food insecurity.” Around a fifth of households are now affected by or at risk of this condition. Food insecurity means that while one may feel a sense of satiety, one lacks access to food that satisfies the body’s nutritional needs. In much of the country, such food is simply not available to the poorer sections of the population. In contrast to hunger, food insecurity is not, or is only negligibly, associated with an emaciated body. Today, in other words, being fat is often seen as a sign of poverty and food insecurity, that is, an inadequate food supply.42
One might ask why all of this matters to a history of fitness. Social geographer Julie Guthman is one of the most astute analysts of the relationship between capitalism, consumption, and bodies in recent history and the present day. She characterizes the neoliberal political economy as “bulimic.” On the one hand, Guthman contends, this system calls for slim, seemingly high-performance bodies, while on the other it steers us toward maximum consumption of industrially produced, highly calorific foods. Their production has become so absurdly cheap, she goes on, that within the capitalist logic of retail and consumption it makes perfect sense to offer, or consume, larger packs and portions at an only slightly higher price. Hence, according to this analysis, the seller ensures customer loyalty (at almost the same labor costs, given that even a “supersize meal” only has to be passed across the counter once), and the buyer gets more for their money. In capitalism, maximum consumption at minimum prices is a very rational behavior. In addition, many consumers are desperate to save money due to falling wages and increasing job insecurity. And those compelled to do several jobs at once to make ends meet are more likely to opt for the fast (and cheap) consumption of snacks and ready meals than for the slow food option. Many poorer neighborhoods are so-called “food deserts,” in which it is simply impossible or very difficult to find healthy food. In such a scenario, the much-vaunted freedom of choice and decision – so highly valued as the core of liberalism, and in the United States more than anywhere else – boils down to income, price, and living conditions. Guthman underscores that the correlation between body shape and class, fatness and poverty is fueled by this dynamic blend of neoliberal politics, a growing wealth gap, and cheap, industrially produced food.43
