Social & Physiological Perspectives for Fitness & Health

Cologne, Germany, Dec 15, 2016: Individuality, The plenary session will focus on Individuality both, from a social and from a physiological perspective. There are two excellent talks given by Prof. Sassatelli (Italy) and Prof. Hoppeler (Switzerland).

Roberta Sassatelli is Professor at the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Milan in Italy. Her research focus is on the historical development of consumer societies and the theory of consumer action, with a particular interest in the contested development of the notion of the consumer as against notions such as citizen or person.

In her lecture Consumers, active leisure and performative rationalization Sassatelli will look at how fitness culture is evolving, interfacing sports practices as well as popular leisure culture, considering that commercialization has worked in two directions: while competitive, professional sport is becoming a global media phenomenon, with increasingly global and yet fragmented audiences, ordinary sport practice is being individualized in the Global North and shaped by the logic of therapeutic leisure which has long been dominant in fitness culture.

Hans Hoppeler is Head of Section of the Institute of Anatomy at the University Bern in Switzerland and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Experimental Biology. His current research interest is skeletal muscle tissue, integrating structural, functional and molecular aspects of muscle plasticity.

In his plenary lecture Individuality in sport – a physiological perspective Hoppeler will address the complex interaction between the genome and exercise which results in a highly variable trainability among individuals. It seems to be likely that there are many genetic variants allowing for outstanding performance as in Olympic champions or world record holders.

We would be happy to meet you in the plenary session [PS-PL01] “Individuality – Social and physiologic perspectives for fitness and health” at 17:15 on Friday, 5th July 2017 in Lecture room “Europa/West”. —- ECSS