ABSTRACT
The rationalist bias in Western culture entails a radical separation of body and minds that accords primacy to the mind. The latter is the province of 'civilization'. Theoretically and practically the body has become the property of the natural sciences - pre-eminent among them medical science and technology - while the relations between body and mind have been consigned largely to philosophy and reductionist psychologies. The body then, is an emblem of society, and the ritual practices governing its usage symbolize and uphold fundamental social relationships and bind individuals to the social order. The articulation represented by the health and fitness movement manifests some interesting elaborations of the sport-body-power relation. Sports fashionwear, for example, which is an extremely important aspect of the movement, goes considerably beyond enhancing female attractiveness and into the production of 'liberated', glamorous, erotic-looking women. Sports activity continues to fragment the working class by reproducing the division between the upper and lower strata.
