Re-turning to fitness ‘riskscapes’ post lockdown: feminist materialisms, wellbeing and affective respondings in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

A plethora of research has focused on how the pandemic has shifted human relations with space, place and wellbeing. Yet, to date few have focused on how the return to public spaces after extended periods of lockdown is impacting subjective wellbeing, particularly amidst a context with fluctuating levels of risk, rapidly changing policy demands and expectations, and different affective responses to such regulations. In this paper we re-turn with the voices of 17 women who were living in Aotearoa New Zealand during the early stages of the pandemic and working in the sport or fitness industry before, during and after the first national lockdown. Drawing upon insights from feminist materialist theory, we explore how indoor fitness studios materialised as ‘riskscapes’ in women’s negotiations of the affects that shaped their re-turn. Whereas some women experienced fear and anxiety in re-turning to familiar spaces ‘made strange’ through new risks, responsibilities, routines and objects (i.e. sanitizer, floor markings), others came to new appreciations for the importance of human connection offered through shared movement experiences. Conceptualizing these different affective relations as processes of becoming, we trace the multiple and more-than-human relations through which wellbeing and risk were co-implicated in particular ways of knowing-moving-­becoming in the re-turn to fitness. Recognising the effects of continued uncertainties, this paper contributes material feminist insights through women’s affective engagements with the social world, surfacing more-than-human wellbeing in the processes of re-turning to familiar spaces ‘made strange’ in and through pandemic space and time.

Keywords:

• Affect
• feminist materialisms
• fitness
• pandemic
• riskscapes
• wellbeing
• women

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Professor Kanchana N. Ruwanpura for amazing Editorial support throughout this process, and the anonymous reviewers for their generous and constructive feedback. Your time and energy are much appreciated! Thanks also to Dr Nida Ahmad for her important contributions to early stages of this project, and to our participants for taking the time to share their pandemic fitness experiences with us. Professor Thorpe is grateful for the support of a Royal Society Te Apārangi James Cook Research Fellowship (JCF-21-UOW-001).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s)

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Holly Thorpe

Professor Thorpe is a sociologist of sport and gender at the University of Waikato, Aotearoa New Zealand. She is the co-author of Feminist New Materialisms, Sport and Fitness: A Lively Entanglement (with Julie Brice and Marianne Clark, 2020), and co-editor of Sport and Physical Culture in Global Pandemic Times: COVID Assemblages (with David L. Andrews and Joshua I. Newman, 2022). Contact: [email protected]

Allison Jeffrey

Dr Allison Jeffrey is an assistant professor of experiential studies in community and sport at Cape Breton University, Canada. Her current research engages feminist posthuman theory to broaden understandings of mature moving bodies in yoga, dance and outdoor adventure sports.

Simone Fullagar

Professor Simone Fullagar is an interdisciplinary sociologist at Griffith University, Australia. Professor Fullagar has published widely on gender equity in sport, mental health, active communities and social well-being.