Liberare il corpo in quattro mura. Etnografia, incorporamento, spazialità del fitness

Presented as the “natural” solution to our “unnatural” lifestyle as urban dwellers, fitness gyms have become astandard feature of contemporary urban places. In this paper, I deploy ethnography and its powers of penetration of spatiality to develop a microsociology the gym which helps approaching this institution from within, deconstructing those claims which contribute to its cultural location in contemporary culture. In particula the paper considers how the gym organises variety, providing a number of codified body techniques in spatially differentiated areas to project the idea that it may cater to a broad and universalised public taking individuality seriously. The paper ends stressing some of the paradoxical configurations of fitness. As a commercial institution that trains participants to train, the gym makes participants come to terms with commoditisation and de-commoditisation, perform their identity through commodified techniques as difference from commodities. Fitness gyms are often presented as universalistic institutions which play on inclusion, yet training needs individual motivation, something that may re-introduce hierarchies, differences, exclusivity, and ultimatel exclusion. Finally, keep-fit practices harbour a daunting contradiction between ascetic rationality and hedonistic passion. The various forms of fitness training are presented by trainers and expert discourse as the most “rational” instrument to keep-fit, take care of the body, get slim, toned, healthy, and so on. Yet, gym spatiality and temporality is coded also through elements of popular culture, such as notably pop music and fashion sporting clothes, that stress pleasurable leisure, subjective re-creation and the capacity to have fun.