Construções imaginárias contemporâneas que produzem discursividades e amalgamam sentidos e representações sobre os termos atividade física e saúde

Abstract

The search for perfect health has become the new contemporary religion, designating physical activity as the competence to manage norms of conduct that are associated with the idea of a great life expectancy by avoiding the risk of becoming ill. Based on the hypothesis that currently the senses linked to physical activity are directly linked to this idea, we sought to investigate how these beliefs are constructed and consolidated and how these socially constructed truths engender actions and habits in modernity. The analyzes were based on two main sources of opinion: Media and School. In chapter 1, we analyzed the meanings attributed to physical activity in the newspaper O Globo on-line, the objective was to identify the role that physical activity occupies in people's daily lives. The method used was Discourse Analysis (AD). It is concluded that the approach of physical activity was limited to the biological perspective, constituting a contemporary panacea. From this, since the concept of physical activity had articulated to the concept of health in a univocal way, it was sought to break this semantic chain and to investigate the imaginary construction on the representation of health of young people. In Chapter 2, we sought to identify the social representation of health of students enrolled in the second year of high school in a private school in Rio de Janeiro, using the Theory of Social Representations (TRS), especially the association technique free of ideas. The results pointed to a representation based on a biological perspective of health whose central element was Hospital, and the peripheral elements: Medical, Welfare, Exercise and Food. It was concluded that this representation was subordinated to a medicalized social context approaching the present proposals in the perspective of health promotion, a dichotomy between private and public health, making this representation socioeconomic and biological. Feeling the need to expand the investigations to another social segment, Chapter 3 investigated the representations of health in a public school, paralleling that of the private school. The results obtained in the public school had: Food, Exercise and Hospital as central elements, and in the private school, Food, Exercise, Hospital and Doctor. The results indicated that the terms of greater relevance for both were characterized by the hospital-centered biological aspects, in which one perceives the diluted physical activity to other practices necessary to achieve perfect health. It was concluded that, although the groups had distinct social segments, no significant differences were identified between the representations