Fitness: healthy lifestyle or biopolitics on body from neoliberal rationality

Abstract

Inside Public Health and Medicine have been ignored important considerations about phi-losophy of technique in lifestyles and fitness. This has meant that such notions be linked to individualistic perspectives where a social vacuum is highlighted. In this paper we present a reflection about Body Improvement Technology. This construct seeks to highlight the articulation of technical, discursive, symbolic and political elements in the social produc-tion of the body, especially in the field of fitness and healthy lifestyles. We carry out a conceptual develo-pment of these terms in order to make explicit the political mechanism that mobilizes them. This work is important for Public Health and Medicine insofar as it allows us to investigate the individualist concep-tions underlying the notion of lifestyles, linking them to broader biopolitical forces that operate within the neoliberal agenda.

Keywords

• human body
• life style
• medicine
• public health