Mænd og mad: Artikulering af kroppen i borgerrettet sundhedsfremme

Healthy habits, weight loss and changes in life style are today considered public as well as private matters in Denmark, and after the municipal reform in 2007 it is primarily the municipalities that are responsible for health prevention and health promotion in Denmark. Put together they are today one of the largest suppliers of health promoting and preventive activities to those citizens who need to look after their own health or have an interest in doing so. The present article examines how a group of overweight men try to adopt a healthier life style through participating in a municipally organized life style programme. We focus particularly on the processes of objectivization and subjectivization and their interaction. We discuss how the men, through different body techniques, which differ from the traditional methods such as exercise and slimming, are taught to objectivize the body – to make the body an object of discipline, in order to make it react in a healthy way – at the same time as the teacher appeals to them as health subjects or individuals, whose actions are guided by a health rationale. Through the analysis we demonstrate that there is a constant dynamic between the processes of objectivization and subjectivization, and that these processes are a necessary prerequisite for the actual realisation of a change of life style in everyday life. Through the programme, the participants become healthy subjects who can feel or sense the state of their bodies; but it is a creative process that can only take place by making the body the object for intervention, reflection and education of the body and its senses.