This book adopts an innovative approach in exploring the evolution of fitness practices among a community of gym goers amid a global pandemic, considering its impact on the interplay of the words, habits, and relationships gym goers use in realizing their aspirations of wellness and well-being.
Perrino and Reno introduce a multilayered framework which combines insights from linguistic and sociocultural anthropology, integrating narrative analysis, discourse analysis, and ethnography, with autoethnography. This approach allows for a holistic portrait of the gym as a research site and of fitness as a fruitful area for dynamic cross-disciplinary study. The volume explores how the COVID-19 pandemic has shaped attitudes and practices around fitness, drawing on audio and video recordings and the authors’ lived experiences to analyze everything from workout choreography to micro-celebrity fitness culture to group classes. The book raises key questions around what it means to be well amid a pandemic, the practical dangers of realizing fitness goals in such times, the effects on the social relationships inherent to gym culture, and the impact on identity construction and self-reflection.
This volume will appeal to scholars interested in the interdisciplinary study of fitness, in such areas as linguistic anthropology, sociocultural anthropology, health humanities, and sport studies.
Acknowledgments
Preface
Brief Description of our Participants
1 Introduction: Pandemic Health and Fitness
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Gym Experiences Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic
1.3 Phenomenology and Semiotics: A Theoretical Orientation
1.3.1 Phenomenology and Semiotics: Gyms as Habit Forming
1.3.2 Good Habits and Bad: Gyms as Deadly
1.4 Research Methods and Ethical Considerations
1.5 Book Structure
2 Workout Choreography
2.1 Introduction
2.2 A Walk through the Riverwalk
2.3 Belonging to a Gym Space
2.4 Pandemic Choreography
2.5 Conclusions: New Choreographies during the COVID-19 Pandemic
3 Reflections and Refractions
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Reflecting and Refractive Mirrors in Gyms: Fitness Ideologies
3.3 Boundless Mirrors
3.4 Conclusions: “The Most Narcissistic Exercise Equipment Ever”
4 Training
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Backstage Passes
4.2.1. Training in Practice: Modeling and Imitation
4.3 Two Fitness Trainers/Instructors: Morgan and Sophia
4.3.1 Morgan
4.3.2 Sophia
4.4 Competitive Stances in Fitness Practices
4.5 Conclusions: Transformative Training Experiences
5 Dangers
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Narrating Fitness: Everyday Dangers
5.3 “You are Overdoing it!”: Training and Exercising (Off) Limits
5.4 (Re-)Gendered Refractions in Gym Spaces
5.5 “Food is Poison!”: Dangerous Nutritional Advice by Fitness Instructors/Trainers
5.6 Conclusions: Dangerous Balances
6 Exercising Groups
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Exercising in Groups at the Riverwalk
6.3 Undergoing a Bootcamp Class with Sophia
6.4 Intimate Group Workouts with Sophia
6.5 Zoom Group Exercising during the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond
6.6 Conclusions: “We are Still Together!”
Conclusion: American Fitness Histories and Possible Futures
7.1 Introduction
7.2 The “Americanness” of Gym Culture?
7.3 The Future of Global Gym Culture?
References
Appendix: Transcription and Abbreviation Conventions
Index
Biography
Sabina M. Perrino is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics at Binghamton University. She is author of Narrating Migration: Intimacies of Exclusion in Northern Italy (Routledge), Research Methods in Linguistic Anthropology (with Sonya Pritzker; Bloomsbury), and Storytelling in the Digital World (with Anna De Fina; John Benjamins). She is the co-editor of the series Bloomsbury Studies in Linguistic Anthropology.
Joshua O. Reno is Professor of Anthropology at Binghamton University. He is the author of Waste Away (2016), Military Waste (2019), and, with Britt Halvorson, Imagining the Heartland (2022), all from University of California Press. He has a forthcoming book, Home Signs, which examines the strangeness and importance of non-verbal communication from an autoethnographic perspective.
