Civilizing “Troublesome” Boy’s Bodies: Observations From a “Health and Youth” Community College Initiative in Northeast England

• In Event: Roundtable Session 111
  In Roundtable Session: For the Health of It: Interrogating Boys, Bodies, and Unspoken School Spaces

Abstract

Purpose-Perspectives
Public health directives, such as the concern to educate the population on risk factors (e.g. illicit drug use, smoking, obesity), are expressly intended to promote so-called ‘healthy lifestyles’. In practice, though, such policies may provide a legitimating discourse for social regulation or control much in line with middle-class ideas of appropriate civility. Pedagogies that seek to train boy’s bodies into civility and conformity are ubiquitous and apparent in contexts such as: the school classroom, playground or gym. Manifest functions or rationales by educators are typically framed as ensuring ‘good health’ and ‘healthy practices’, for a ‘healthy future’. The plasticity of health (discourses), however, suggests the need to look deeper, more closely and critically at what is meant, in practice, by a concern to promote the ‘health’ of boys by teachers and other workers. Indeed, do pedagogues themselves have more explicitly regulatory concerns and how do their practices unfold during interactions with boys who may be more or less recalcitrant?
Methods
This paper presents ethnographic observations from a pilot study of a college-based ‘Health and Youth’ community initiative in a working-class area of Northeast England. The pilot, undertaken over a twelve week period was part of a larger funded study on masculinities and weight-issues. The ‘Health and Youth’ initiative was co-ordinated between a local school, National Health Service Primary Care Trust and a college physical education facility. Comprising one one-and-half hour session each week on a Friday afternoon, the initiative consisted of classroom sessions and physical activity (e.g. football, weight training) among a small group of 14 to 16 year old boys. These boys, according to the organisers, had been targeted for the initiative because they risked school exclusion on account of their ‘troublesome’ behaviour.
Data Sources
Using ethnographic field notes recorded during the first eight weeks of this project, the paper provides thick descriptions and a critical analysis of an initiative that was explicitly framed as health promoting. Although health, physical activity, fitness and nutrition provided a rationale, weekly focus and structure to the project, in actuality there was a deep and sustained effort to instil what the administrators of the scheme deemed to be ‘appropriate’ standards of civilised behaviour. This expectation to ‘fit in’ with dominant societal values provides an interesting case study of the ways in which healthism – an obfuscating middle-class ideology – may be strategically used to promote conformity to the dictates of those administering the programme. Nonetheless, despite the well-intentioned concerns of pedagogues and health promoters, there were always spaces for resistance among boys deemed ‘at risk’ of ‘unhealthy lives’ (social exclusion).
Significance
Analytically, by placing these micro-social practices within a broader structural context social scientists may explore the theoretical salience of various ideas such as ‘the civilizing process’, ‘civilised bodies’, ‘bio-power’ as well as the social construction of plural masculinities as configurations of body reflexive practice. Public and policy implications also emerge vis-à-vis a critical evaluation of interventions that ostensibly seek to promote health.

Author

• Lee Monaghan, University of Limerick