Governing the healthy body: Discourses of leisure and lifestyle within Australian health policy

Abstract

In the past 30 years there have been significant shifts in the way Australian public health policy has problematized the role of leisure, recreation and physical activity in relation to the WHO identification of lifestyle disease risks to individual and social wellbeing. This article offers a cultural analysis of the way discourses of leisure and healthy lifestyles have been produced through the governmental objectives of health policy and promotion aimed at the body (Foucault, 1991; Rose, 1999). Two campaigns (1970's Life be in it! and 1990's Active Australia) are examined in relation to the rationalities and ethics through which individuals are encouraged to govern their own healthy lifestyle practices in the name of freedom.