Risky bodies: health surveillance and teachers’ embodiment of health
- 10 December 2010
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis Ltd in International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education
- Vol. 23 (7), 785-802
- https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2010.529471
Abstract
In the current climate of health surveillance, governmental measurement and control as well as a focus on individual responsibility for risk are prevalent in school contexts. Physical education is a crucial site for the production and reproduction of health messages and thus is an important location through which health and healthy bodies are constructed and surveilled. Within a broader project with 16 participants in an urban city in the USA, it was found that the work of physical education teachers involved the management of a range of risky bodies – both their own bodies and the bodies of others. Risky bodies were unhealthy bodies, bodies read as overweight, ageing bodies and injured bodies. The physical education teachers’ identities were embedded in their desire to embody health but not in simplistic, unified ways. In a climate of health surveillance, the teachers took personal responsibility for managing risk and were both the embodiment of bio‐citizens and part of the mechanisms of (re)producing bio‐citizens.Keywords
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