PHYSICAL ACTIVITY IN SPAIN BETWEEN THE MODERNITY-POSMODERNITY DIALECTIC: THE CASE OF FITNESS CENTRES

Abstract

This article joins the debate on the change endured by Western society approached through the perspective of sports practice and physical activity in Spain. Based on recent research on Spanish sports practice and studies on fitness centres, this essay suggests that the physical activity in this scenario reflects social change, in tune with Fredric Jameson’s relational perspective between postmodernism and capitalism. For this, it is shown indicators suggesting that there are practices which are new and culturally different from modern sports practice, and we later highlight indicators showing that there are more radical forms of modern sports practice. In this way, the main argument uphold in this essay is that the new sport system put forward by fitness centres is an expression of the new turn taken by postmodern culture under modern capitalist structures still in use, and along these lines, they reflect existing tensions between, on the one hand, the perception of autonomy, freedom and subjectivity of individual action and, on the other hand, social control, rationalization and mercantilization.