Today's society is obsessed with the body, its size, shape and healthiness. Governments, business and the popular media, spend and earn fortunes encouraging populations to get healthy, eat properly, exercise daily and get thin. But how are current social trends and attitudes towards the body reflected in the curriculum of schools, in the teaching of Physical Education and Health? How do teachers and health professionals influence young people's experiences of their own and others' bodies? Is health education liberating or merely another form of regulation and social control? Drawing together some of the latest research on the body and schooling, Body Knowledge and Control offers a sharp and challenging critique of (post) modern-day attitudes toward obesity, health, childhood and the mainstream science and business interests that promote narrow body-centred ways of thinking. Includes: * A critical history of notions of body, identity and health in schools. * Analysis of the 'obesity epidemic', eating disorders* Analysis of the influence of nurtured body image in racism, sexism, homophobia and body elitism in schools.
Author(s): John Evans, Brian Davies, Jan Wright
Edition: 1
Year: 2003
Language: English
Pages: 272
Book Cover......Page 1
Title......Page 4
Copyright......Page 5
Contents......Page 8
Preface......Page 10
Contributors......Page 12
Foreword......Page 16
Acknowledgements......Page 24
Part I Introduction......Page 26
1 Pedagogy, symbolic control, identity and health......Page 28
2 Post-structural methodologies......Page 44
Part II The social context of physical education and health......Page 58
3 Sociology, the body and health in a risk society1......Page 60
4 Towards a critical history of the body, identity and health......Page 77
5 An elephant in the room and a bridge too far, or physical education and the ‘obesity epidemic’......Page 93
6 The discursive production of childhood, identity and health......Page 108
7 The body and health in policy......Page 121
Part III Schooling the body......Page 138
8 ‘The Beauty Walk’......Page 140
9 Health and physical education and the production of the ‘at risk self’......Page 155
10 Gendered bodies and physical identities......Page 165
11 From performance to impairment......Page 182
12 ‘Hungry to be noticed’......Page 198
13 Threatening space......Page 216
Part IV Future directions......Page 230
14 Endnote: the embodiment of consciousness......Page 232
15 Conclusion......Page 243
Index......Page 264
