The global physical inactivity pandemic: an analysis of knowledge production

Abstract

In July 2012, The Lancet announced a pandemic of physical inactivity and a global call to action to effect change. The worldwide pandemic is said to be claiming millions of lives every year. Asserting that physical inactivity is pandemic is an important moment. Given the purported scale and significance of physical inactivity around the world, this research examines how the pandemic is rhetorically constructed and how various solutions are proposed. We apply a governmentality perspective to examine the continuity, coherence and appropriateness of ideas about physical activity. The analysis demonstrates that within The Lancet, there is disunity about what is known about physical activity, problematic claims of ‘abnormality’ and contradictions in the proposed deployment of a systems approach to solve the problem. The article concludes by suggesting that as knowledge produced about physical activity grows, scholars need to beware of nostalgic conceptions of physical activity, account for the immense diversity of lived experiences which do not abide by idealistic recommendations and consider more rigorously contentious claims about physical activity programme effects.

Keywords:

• Physical activity
• Policy
• Discourse
• Health
• Pandemic

Notes

1. Eight years earlier, Manson, Skerrett, Greenland, and VanItallie (2004) also announced escalating global pandemics of sedentary lifestyles and inactivity and also wrote a ‘call to action’ for clinicians (Manson et al., 2004).

2. Lupton (1995) notes that ‘from medieval times well into the closing years of the Victorian era, European towns and cities were characterised by filthy streets littered with human and animal excrement and rotting garbage’ (p. 26).

3. The term ‘normal’ also appears in other places as common sense. Wen and Wu (2012) claim that ‘being inactive is perceived as normal’ (p. 192, italics added). Lee et al. (2012) also imagine ‘if all obese people in the USA were to attain normal weight’ (p. 228, italics added).

4. The idea of ‘failure’ features in a profile interview in another Series in The Lancet, where one author makes a specific claim about physical education; ‘The truth is that physical educators have failed … Physical education itself hasn't delivered physical activity benefits to children in schools’ (Khan, in Holmes, 2012, p. 20). This type of accusation in a world leading medical journal that physical educators have failed has been responded to by physical education scholars as being the pursuit of not only illusory but also dangerous ideals (see Evans, Rich, & Davies, 2004).

5. Also, a systems approach would cast a critical eye over the alleged altruism of the IOC, an organisation which has been subject to a range of critiques focused on corruption which would surely undermine its capacity to promote physical activity around the world (Jennings, 2011; Lenskyj, 2008).