Risky bodies: health surveillance and teachers’ embodiment of health

Abstract

In the current climate of health surveillance, governmental measurement and control as well as a focus on individual responsibility for risk are prevalent in school contexts. Physical education is a crucial site for the production and reproduction of health messages and thus is an important location through which health and healthy bodies are constructed and surveilled. Within a broader project with 16 participants in an urban city in the USA, it was found that the work of physical education teachers involved the management of a range of risky bodies – both their own bodies and the bodies of others. Risky bodies were unhealthy bodies, bodies read as overweight, ageing bodies and injured bodies. The physical education teachers’ identities were embedded in their desire to embody health but not in simplistic, unified ways. In a climate of health surveillance, the teachers took personal responsibility for managing risk and were both the embodiment of bio‐citizens and part of the mechanisms of (re)producing bio‐citizens.

Keywords:

• bio‐citizenship
• identities
• teachers’ work
• performativity

Notes

1. For example, Rich and Evans (2005) reported that the students in their study perceived that physical education teachers equated being thin with being fit and healthy. In teachers’ monitoring of students with the intention of regulating health behaviour, the surveillance of students’ bodies and associated assumptions about health practices are implicated in the (re)production of the ‘cult of the body’ that in turn can lead to problems such as eating disorders and exercise addiction (Brace‐Govan 2002; Evans et al. 2008; Johns and Johns 2000; Tinning and Glasby 2002).

2. An example of surveillance measures in the USA is the Behavioural Risk Factor Surveillance System, which tracks ‘health conditions and risk behaviours’ (National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion 2008, 1).

3. For example, a National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) was established in the UK in 2005 to address childhood obesity. Children in reception (four to five years old) and Year 6 (10–11 years old) are weighed and measured during the school year. In seeking to improve the effectiveness of the NCMP it was decided to inform parents of the result of these measurements (Department of Health and Department of Children, Schools and Families 2005). These results become part of the performative culture of reporting to parents.

4. In promoting health programmes, the percentage of schools in the USA that held competitions between groups of teachers increased from 12.1% to 26.4% (Eaton, Marx, and Bowie 2007, 565). An audit culture is exemplified through the School Health Index, a self‐assessment tool for school health programmes, in a document where teachers’ health is described as an ‘asset’: ‘This asset has the potential to either improve or diminish students’ learning’ (Directors of Health Promotion and Education 2007, 1). The addition of individual responsibility for risk is evident in the ‘inclusion of individual follow‐up interventions to support behaviour change for health risks’ (Eaton, Marx, and Bowie 2007, 558). Physical education teachers are listed as key staff to support employee wellness programmes.

5. This valorisation of health has been termed healthism (Petersen 1997).

6. This information was approved for publication by the participants through member checks.