Reflections on modern physical activity: how can Graeber’s ideas help us to reconceptualise it and increase the value of play?

Abstract

Drawing on some broader social processes, the main purpose of this paper is to argue that some modern conceptualisations and understandings of physical activity can go hand in hand with some modern conceptualisations and understandings of work. This may be helpful in explaining both the discontent that exists in this context and the numerous, but repeatedly unsuccessful, attempts to promote physical activity at the mass level. In the context of neoliberal society, we show how various forms of physical activity have evolved from fundamentally playful activities, fun and pleasurable in themselves, to an instrumentalised and commodified moral obligation. Such a thematisation is linked later in the article to Graeber’s concept of ‘bullshitisation’, which also provides a starting point for a different, potentially emancipatory conceptualisation of physical activity, in which play, as understood in some philosophical examinations, can occupy a central place.