David McGillivray

Health clubs and body politics: aesthetics and the quest for physical capital

At present, the western world wrestles with an obesity epidemic whilst, paradoxically, maintaining a fascination for the aesthetic ideal body. With the Scottish health and fitness industry providing the empirical backdrop, and drawing on the work of Bourdieu, this paper critically reflects upon processes of embodied production and consumption and the quest for physical capital and its referential symbolism. Using a range of qualitative methods across three case study facilities it is argued that as consumers seek to attain desired forms of physical capital, health and fitness clubs serve both to capitalize on and perpetuate cycles of embodied dissatisfaction. Although willingly subjecting their bodies to constant ocularcentric and objectifying processes, consumers are constantly reminded of their failure to attain the physical capital they desire. These processes not only mirror modern consumerism but also highlight a process of self‐imposed domination. With external medical and media discourses exerting persistent pressure on the embodied state, desire for physical capital produces a self‐legitimating and regulatory regime perpetrated upon the self within the internal environment of the health and fitness club. Therefore, as a venue for playing out aesthetic politics, health and fitness club spaces are anything but healthy as they oil the desire and dreamscape of physical capital, maintaining an aesthetic masochism and thus keeping the treadmills literally and economically turning.

Fitter, happier, more productive: Governing working bodies through wellness

Over the last two decades wellness discourses have had a particularly powerful influence on advanced western societies. Some of the discourses have found their way into the corporate realm and these provide the primary focus of this paper. Whereas the focus upon unruly bodies remains a force of continuity with the concerns of 19th century paternalistic industrialists, in contemporary organisational wellness initiatives, working bodies are urged and supported to govern their own productive capacities, both in and outside of work. However, drawing on Foucaults ideas of governmentality and the subject, I propose in this paper that such discourses of organisational wellness cannot simply be seen as transformative and performative. Rather, these discourses encounter employee conflict, contestation and resistance which prevent the translation of macro wellness messages into concrete effects at the local, organisational level. In order to identify and give voice to the various subject positions emerging through discourses of organisational wellness a spectrum of self‐governance is developed.Over the last two decades wellness discourses have had a particularly powerful influence on advanced western societies. Some of the discourses have found their way into the corporate realm and these provide the primary focus of this paper. Whereas the focus upon unruly bodies remains a force of continuity with the concerns of 19th century paternalistic industrialists, in contemporary organisational wellness initiatives, working bodies are urged and supported to govern their own productive capacities, both in and outside of work. However, drawing on Foucaults ideas of governmentality and the subject, I propose in this paper that such discourses of organisational wellness cannot simply be seen as transformative and performative. Rather, these discourses encounter employee conflict, contestation and resistance which prevent the translation of macro wellness messages into concrete effects at the local, organisational level. In order to identify and give voice to the various subject positions emerging through...

Caught up in and by the Beautiful Game A Case Study of Scottish Professional Footballers

Drawing upon the work of Pierre Bourdieu, this article illustrates how a group of young, predominantly working-class men come to possess a doxic knowledge of the value of the game of football and its stakes. Drawing on a survey of Scottish football players, the article concludes that young participants are guided from an early age toward sporting careers that, although offering the hope of transcending their objective conditions, invariably deceive them with optimism. In the perilous financial climate facing the Scottish professional game, players are being discarded bereft of the exchangeable, readily transferable skills necessary for a future in an alternative employment field. Overreliant upon a constantly depreciating bank of physical capital, these players face precarious futures once this asset reaches exhaustion and their working bodies are deemed surplus to requirements.

Event policy: from theory to strategy.

1. Events Policy: An Emerging Field of Study 2. Events and Festivity: From Ritual to Regeneration 3. Trends in Events and Festivals: The Policy Panacea 4. Evaluating Event Outcomes: A Legitimation Crisis 5. The Politics of Events in an Age of Accumulation 6. Consuming Events: From Bread and Circuses to Brand 7. Events and Social Capital: Linking and Empowering Communities 8. Events as Cultural Capital: Animating the Urban 9. Glasgow 2014: Demonstrating Capacity and Competence 10. Destination Dubai: Events Policy in an Arab State 11. Mardi Gras New Orleans: Policy Intervention in an Historical Event 12. Singapore: A Mixed Economy of Events 13. Conclusions. Bibliography

Exploring Hyper-experiences: Performing the Fan at Germany 2006

In the modern era, affluent western economies are increasingly marked by the development and use of cultural products (Ransome, 2005). Festivals and events are central aspects of a global cultural economy where material products and services merely facilitate the quest for experiences (Pine & Gilmore, 1999). This article investigates the phenomenon of the travelling sports fan through a case study of the Munich Fan Park experience at the 2006 World Cup Finals in Germany. It highlights how nation states, cities and individuals are engaged in circuits of cultural consumption whereby ephemeral, ‘hyper-experiences’ are sought, technologically captured and virally circulated for their promised cultural cache and status value. Methodologically, the paper draws upon, and integrates, Foucauldian theory with observational and interview data collected during the Germany 2006 world football extravaganza. In focusing upon Brazil and Australian supporters, an analysis of the sports fan experience is uncovered as fans are tracked, observed and digitally captured along with ‘vox pop’ recordings inside and outside the formalised Fan Park space. The authors argue that in their organisation, the Fan Parks manufacture and accentuate intense dramatalogical experiences (Roche, 2000) within a predominantly disciplined set of spatial practices. Fan Parks provide a platform upon which hedonistic or ludic subjectivities are assumed, accepted and wilfully enacted. These spatially demarcated locations legitimate the subject position and performativity of the ‘fan’ (Blackshaw & Crabbe, 2004). However, through technological mediation, fan subjectivities can also be de-territorialised, breaking free from the guiding principles of disciplinary practices.

Digital cultures, acceleration and mega sporting event narratives

Mega sporting events, as with the evolution of human progress, continue to be marked by trepidation and awe over the transformational power of technology. Today, mega sporting events like the Olympic Games and World Cup are increasingly the captivating spectacles of consumer capitalism. Whereas, since the 1980s, established media organisations have exerted a significant influence over the production of mega sporting event narratives, the mass availability of everyday digital technologies democratises media making, changing the way events are conceived, planned, mediatised and reported. Citizens, living digitised and social mediated lifestyles, are now important co-creators, shaping the design, delivery and dissemination of events to a wider audience. This article explores the emergence of digital tools and technologies and their impact on mega sporting event media narratives. It highlights how social media and ubiquitous digital technologies augment accelerated identities. As a means of illustrating the acceleration agenda and its impact on mega sporting event coverage, the author presents a case study of a citizen media initiative #citizenrelay, which focused on the Olympic Torch Relay on its journey around Scotland, UK in the summer of 2012. The article concludes by suggesting that the digitally democratised citizen has power in their pocket to make media that, when brought together as part of a collective, can present alternative narratives to those offered by the established media frame.

Capturing Adventure: Trading experiences in the symbolic economy

Abstract In the early twenty‐first century, participation in adventure sports activities represents a fertile means of reinforcing personal identity and cultural distinction, secured through the quest for, and accrual of, symbolic capital. This article draws on a case study investigation of one Scottish whitewater rafting company to explore the technologically mediated nature of the accrual of symbolic capital in the adventure sports sub‐field. It is concluded that experiences have emerged as new tradable commodities. An industry of commercial adventure organisations has emerged to service a demand characterised by a quest for managed instantaneous gratification and edited memories, rather than for authenticity and self‐discovery. At the soft, or mass, end of the adventure market, it is perhaps now possible to talk in the language of ‘post‐adventure’ whereby both producers and consumers stage a theatrical performance which produces a visual representation of authentic experience transferable to a virtual witnessing audience. The post‐adventure experientialists, although possessing little knowledge of the intricacies of the adventure sports activities in which they participate, know and value them in terms of their mediatised status value and cool fashion statement. Whereas the adventurer of the past secured status through achievement, the post‐adventurer has no such concerns as their gazing social network recognises and bestows value to displays of spectacle, style and show.

Health promotion in the workplace: a missed opportunity?

Looks at the trend in the UK towards workplace health promotion (WHP) and, in particular, with one facet of WHP, namely workplace fitness provision (WFP). Contends that the state, organisations and individuals each fail to maximise their benefits from provision. Draws attention to inherent tensions between governmental policy rhetoric and the organisational and individual reality within the workplace. Concludes that WFP currently represents a missed opportunity. Governmental aims for improved public health are misguided given the instrumental approach taken by organisations towards WFP, especially as WFP has tended to reinforce inequalities found in the public leisure sector with regard to user profiles. If there is indirect discrimination in employment because of non‐participation in such initiatives then the achievement of public health objectives, reductions in employee absence rates or the achievement of healthy workforces will remain a pipedream.

From Fan Parks to Live Sites: Mega events and the territorialisation of urban space

This article draws on the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari to consider the phenomenon of Live Sites and Fan Parks which are now enshrined within the viewing experience of mega sports events. Empirically, the article draws upon primary research on Live Sites generated during the London 2012 Olympic Games. Live Sites are represented as new spaces within which to critically locate and conceptually explore the shifting dynamics of urban space, subjectivity and its performative politic. The authors argue that the first, or primary, spaces of mega sporting events (the official venues) and their secondary counterparts (Live Sites) simply extend brandscaping tendencies but that corporate striation is always incomplete, opening up possibilities for disruption and dislocation.

Governing working bodies through leisure.

This paper focuses on what appears to represent the consummate extension and blurring of distinctions between work and leisure, with employers providing some form of leisure opportunities for their employees at, or associated with, the workplace. Empirically, the paper draws upon investigations undertaken with three Scottish-based case study organizations conducted from 1999 to 2001. The results showed that healthy leisure forms are central to contemporary active leisure initiatives at work, but that the docile assimilation of these messages is neither universal nor without contestation.