Bodily practices/physical activity in the city gym program: Health care and participants’ discourse

Abstract

This article investigates the bodily practices/physical activity and discources produced by participants in the City Gym Program in Belo Horizonte, Brazil in relation to comprehensive primary health care. We conducted a qualitative study anchored in multiple case studies using participant observation and semi-structured interviews and drawing on the concept of subjectivation proposed by Michel Foucault. In the two gyms included in this study, the findings reveal the presence of the hegemonic approach to health care, represented by the notion of physical activity, and other approaches that resemble the concept of bodily practices. This contributed to the adoption of a dual interwined notion of health care as bodily practices/physical activity. Both approaches were legitimate in the production of subjectivities of program participants.