ABSTRACT
Notions of individual physical fitness reflect the particular problems of social fitness. As society is transformed through such processes as urbanization, immigration, industrialization, and deindustrialization, the problems and practices of the individual body symbolically reproduce the crises and rituals of the social body (Douglas 1966, 1982). At times of war, for example, when the social body comes under attack and must defend itself, physical fitness has been defined as the capacity for battle, and the individual’s strength and endurance become the concern of the population as a whole. Fitness is thus best understood as a relative state, a level of competence or capacity to succeed in particular conditions. As conditions change – from war to peace, rural to urban living, manufacturing to service economies – so too do the body’s capacities that are socially valued. Over time, some notions of fitness emerge and become dominant while others become residual, and may become dominant once again (cf. Williams 1977: 112).
