Social Justice Through Sport and Exercise Studies: A Manifesto 1

Proem ²

Spurred by a specific historical moment, namely the global COVID-19 pandemic and its intersection with ongoing racial injustice in the world, this manifesto is intended to reimagine social justice in realms of sport, exercise and medicine, and other forms of physical culture that have historically dictated specific “correct” bodies or minds; i.e., those that are nondisabled and free of mental illness. Current times of revolution and pandemic (themselves interrelated), highlight gross and persistent disparities/segregation/oppressions that intersect with health, exercise, body culture, and power undercurrents.

Our manifesto is grounded in critique of power by which we mean hegemonic or ideological power, “experiences of power and power relations” as David L. Andrews and colleagues conceptualize in their enduring body of research (Andrews & Silk, 2011, p. 8. See also Andrews, 2002, 2008, 2019; Andrews et al., 2013; Newman et al., 2020; Silk et al., 2010). Such studies of power/hegemony can be used to critique (as we attempt to do in this essay) prevalent, taken-for-granted, biased and/or simplistic views (what we term ‘myths’) of sport as serving purely positive function in society. Original thought about power, the body, and sport from scholars such as Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault, Raymond Williams, John Hargreaves, and Pirkko Markula also ground our monograph (e.g., Foucault, 1969, 1977, 1990; Gramsci, 1947/2011; Hargreaves, 1986; Markula, 2003, 2014; Markula & Pringle, 2006; Williams, 1978). Further, key terms discussed by C.L. Cole et al., (2004) in their pioneering writing on Foucault informed our understanding of the ways and sites in which power operates and is resisted:

panopticism/discipline (liberalism, liberal individual, surveillance, micro-physics of power, subjection, technology, automatic docility, docile bodies, normalization, dividing practices, self/other, corporeal identities visible/invisible, violences, prison, soul) and bio-power/governmentality (repressive hypothesis, truth, bio-politics, power over life, sexuality, racism, population, biological self-betterment, incitement to discourse, conduct of conduct, neo-liberalism, citizenship). (Cole et al., 2004, p. 208)

The above terms serve to highlight numerous, intersectional power relations that exist in our societies. Indeed, dominant ideologies about health, exercise, and the body do not have definitive form, “nor are they the exclusive possession of any single agent…; nor is power situated in, or generated at any single location or level of social formations… power is diffused and circulates throughout the social body (Hargreaves, 1986, pp. 3–4). In this work we discuss ideologies of the body and physical activity that permeate academic research in taken-for-granted perceptions, a “lived milieu of power… operating at every level of human life…neither abstract nor subjective… both limiting and productive… (Andrews & Silk, 2011, pp. 9–10),

By social justice we mean finding ways to address and change forms of disparities and institutionalized discrimination including but not limited to racism, sexism, homophobia, mentalism, and ableism. Though every marginalized group is worthy of study, we focus on social justice in order to “unpack” selected ideas of physical activity and health. An expanded definition of social justice published in a recent important article about social justice research agendas in kinesiology is likewise helpful to our work. Harrison et al. define social justice as

advocacy, agency, and action directed toward (a) correcting inequities in all of America's institutions (e.g., business, education, health/medical, juridical, government) between majority (mostly White people in power) and minoritized populations (e.g., African Americans), especially those in poor communities, often minoritized women, and individuals with disabilities; and (b) moving beyond assumption of deficits, building upon strengths, and thus, empowering such marginalized groups for meaningful, sustainable change. (Harrison et al., 2021, p. 227)

Myths in Scholarship

The need for social justice predicates the presence of oppression and privilege (Adams, 2013). Those in a privileged group or social position may be unaware of the existence of a master narrative of Whiteness, maleness, able-bodiedness etc., and that their lived experiences and assumptions are very much different from oppressed social groups. To do social justice, we must problematize and become aware of dominant taken for granted notions that have become “truths” instead of the hegemonically created social constructions that they are. We term these taken for granted “truths” as “myths” and intend to problematize their unquestioning presence within exercise, sport and health and suggest modest recommendations for more socially just scholarship towards equity and empowerment. As noted above, we address the following myths in studies of physical culture across sport, exercise, play, disability, etc.:

The embodied tragedy myth and the myth of bodily control

The Unmitigated Tragedy of Disability and the Myth of Bodily Control

In her chapter “Accessible Futures, Future Coalitions”, Alison Kafer presents a dilemma within environmental justice of the intertwining of disability as an effect of environmental pollution and toxicity (2013). She observes that often the narratives within fights for environmental justice rely on a concept of a “natural” body that is disrupted by unnatural incursions into the “natural” environment, resulting in disability. This narrative necessarily frames disability and disabled bodies as “abnormalities” (p. 159), “stories of error or aberration” (p. 157), deviations from normal that result from these polluting influences. She argues that, in doing this, these efforts in the end serve to reinforce and perpetuate “cultural assumptions about the unmitigated tragedy of disability” (p. 159). The theme of sick, broken, and failed bodies permeates this chapter as she interrogates the ableist assumptions underlying efforts at promoting environmental justice, abortion of disabled fetuses, and reproductive rights.

Kafer argues that implicit in this understanding of disability as tragedy is “the assumption that the meaning of ‘suffering’ or ‘quality of life’ is self-evident and monolithic; rather than using these concepts as if they ‘obviously’ led us to only one conclusion [that disability is an unmitigated tragedy that must be avoided and eradicated], we could attend instead to their shifts in meanings across different registers, contexts, or bodies/minds” (2013; p. 168, as discussed in M. Adamson 2019, emphasis Adamson). In this framing, Kafer shifts the emphasis on bodies to the more fundamental question regarding the critique of the limited body: what we are really talking about is what bodies count as meaningful. Further, she articulates clearly the need to deeply and continually examine the frailties of human embodiment and incorporate them into our understandings of what a meaningful human life is.

Susan Wendell illustrates this well: “Only some people know what is at stake when we contemplate preventing and curing illnesses: not only the relief of suffering, but also, as with other disabilities, ways of being human” (2001, pp. 31–32). While our intentions are often to prevent, cure, or alleviate suffering, those intentions are always tied to a question of the erasure of specific ways of being human. Any ideal body is an erasure of those bodies (or bodily moments) that are not ideal.

Much like the material throughout this essay, what Kafer and Wendell ask us to examine is how our particular theoretical orientations approach the question of bodily suffering and limitation. How do they frame limited, broken, failed, or disabled bodies? Can such bodily experiences be readily incorporated into these framings of humanity? Or, do we see these bodies as broken and senseless; as empty of any meaning or obscured in an intractable confusion and disorder? Do we see them deficient, limited, incomplete; as deficient perspectives on the human condition? Or do we see them as necessary, integral, or even vital bodies of human knowledge? In her own words:

Illness is not by definition an evil, but people fear and try to avoid illness because of the suffering it causes. …[We must acknowledge that] illness is not only suffering. Like living with cerebral palsy or blindness, living with pain, fatigue, nausea, unpredictable abilities, and/or the imminent threat of death creates different ways of being that give valuable perspectives on life and the world. (Wendell, 2001, pp. 31–32)

How do our theories situate these particular bodily knowledges? Do they see them at all? Tobin Siebers argues that there is important knowledge “embodied in [disability]” that is vital for those whose bodies are disabled, as well as the societies in which those individuals live (2008, p. 27). “Pain and suffering may sometimes be resources for the epistemological insights” of those who suffer, insights about the social worlds in which they suffer and about the human condition (p. 20). However, our tendency to associate the body with “human mortality and fragility … forces a general distrust of the knowledge embodied in it” (p. 26). Do our theories create failed or broken bodies and then disregard or discount the knowledge embodied in them? What is our understanding of suffering and pain, and how is that informing our understanding and trust of bodily knowledge?

Before continuing, some clarification of the terms is in order. Here, the terms broken, failed (failure), and limited are employed within the framing context of disability studies’ critique of ableist notions of the body and human embodiment. Within dominant discourses, disabled bodies are seen as (and thus disabled by) broken, failed, malformed, underdeveloped, incomplete, and tragic. Such understandings of these types of bodies (and suffering in general) are discursive formations that establish able-bodiedness as normative, and the suffering body (in any form) as deviant and deficient. They reinforce a limited view of what counts as human and hide behind this dehumanizing understanding of human limitation and suffering. Because of this, they prevent us from truly engaging with the bodily experiences, knowledges, and perspectives that can only be found in people who are embodied in these ways. In this Unmitigated Tragedy of Disability section, Matthew Adamson argues that this notion of failure and brokenness needs to be reclaimed in order to humanize our theorizing (in medicine, health, or cultural studies) and expand our understanding of what bodies count as human bodies and what bodily knowledges count as knowledge.

This tendency can be seen in a number of different ideological myths that underlie and guide our approach to health, the body, and its problems. There are many of these myths: the myth of the body as it should be versus how it is experienced (Sheets-Johnstone, 2011; Siebers, 2008); the myth of the able-body (McRuer, 2006); the myth of physical perfection (Kafer, 2013); the myth of the importance of outcomes/endpoints over processes (Noonan, 2018); and the myth of control (Wendell, 1996).

Wendell's myth of control provides a particularly salient example of this. She defines the myth of control as “the belief that it is possible, by means of human actions, to have the bodies we want and to avoid illness, disability, and death” (1996, p. 9). Importantly, she argues that there exist at least two versions of this myth, each falling on one side of the nature/culture or material/discourse divides. On the one hand, we have Western medicine, which professes the ability to control nature and within which disabled bodies stand as “constant reminders of the failures of that process” (p. 63). On the other hand, we have what she calls the “mind-over-body” version of the myth, which assumes that reason and willpower can overcome and control any bodily transgression. It is “the idea that I can make my body do anything I really want it to do … a childish belief in the omnipotence of what I want” (p. 103). She says that there is a particularly curious metaphysical aspect to this myth: it discounts the body “as a cause of events” (p. 103; emphasis hers). In each instance, the myth of control serves to prevent the transmission of “knowledge about how to live with limited and suffering bodies” (p. 109), a devaluing of these human perspectives.

The significance of this argument is that it brings to light an important criticism of our various framings and understandings of the body in research on health, sport, and exercise. These understandings in a very real sense are disabling for specific types of bodies (and ultimately for all types of bodies). Siebers expresses this very eloquently: our rejection of the body and emphasis on the tragedy of broken bodies “tempt[s] us to believe that the body can be changed as easily as changing clothes. The ideology of ability stands ready to attack any desire to know and to accept the disabled body in its current state” (2008, p. 26). Any body that does not readily conform to our discursive/material molding, is attacked, ignored, discounted, or erased. In other words, an ideal body is “an able body whose condition relies on its psychological powers…, a body that the subject cannot feel…. The healthy subject is either disinterested in its body or in control of [it]” (Siebers, 2008, pp. 76–77). But this begs the question: “what sort of body is it that is free to change its shape and location at will, that can become anyone and travel anywhere? … [such a] body is no body at all” (Bordo, 1990, p. 145).

In short, we often fall into the trap of seeing the materially contingent body as anything other than broken, failed, senseless, and tragic. The limited body that bleeds, seizes, falls ill, requires sleep, hungers, fatigues, decays and dies seemingly has no formative role to play in our theories outside of its annoyance, limitation, or tragedy, or (more importantly) its need for remedy/intervention. As Sydnor illustrates below in the context of SDP, this represents an unfortunate and unnecessary limitation on how we frame sport, exercise, human bodies, human abilities, and health, a perspective upon which we must expand. We strongly align ourselves with the disability studies critique of any theoretical orientation that does not see, embrace, and value disability as “[belonging] to the spectrum of human variation” (Siebers, 2008, p. 25). Bodily limitation, pain, suffering, and material contingency and finitude are essential and deeply valuable perspectives on being human. Brynn Adamson's MOVE MS program is a wonderful example of embracing and promoting such a perspective and approach in the study of health, sport, and exercise (Adamson, 2018)).

Because of this, it is important to revisit and reinterpret the notion of brokenness and failure in terms of the body (Adamson, 2019). Bodies that are limited, disabled, recalcitrant, assertive, broken, paralyzed, or “failures” are not tragedies lacking any meaning, sense, or value. They are vital perspectives on our social worlds and the human condition. As Kafer suggests, “I long to hear stories that not only admit limitation, frustration, and failure, but that recognize such failure as ground for theory itself” (2013, p. 141, emphasis mine). In our own work with/about/among human bodies, failure and brokenness might be reframed (or reclaimed), not as “the absolute negation of … life-value” (Noonan, 2018, p. 161), but as crucial components of humanness at the heart of our efforts. As Richardson suggests below, incorporating a greater diversity of these perspectives is essential in addressing the inequities of ableism, while also providing powerful and practical benefits for the disabled community and all types of bodies.

Sieber's theorization of “complex embodiment” is a powerful example of such an approach (2008). Within this theory, he argues that we need to incorporate and develop in our theories frameworks that firmly set aside the urge to value primarily a bodily ideal or a body nostalgia and rather “embrace what the body has become and will become relative to the demands on it, whether environmental, representational, or corporeal” (p. 27). We need theories in which we can feel the body, not which see ideal embodiment as that in which “the able or healthy body is … a body that the subject cannot feel” (pp.76–77). Simon Williams, advocating for a critical realist approach to understanding the body, echoes and further extends this call. He argues for a return to “our fleshy all-too-human selves”, embracing “the contingencies this involves, and the carnal link it provides with similarly mortal beings and enmattered selves” (1999, p. 812). Not only will this allow us to reframe and reincorporate the body into our theorizing, it will also give us a richer sense of human life, one that can help us embrace human diversity (including bodily diversity) in a more expansive way. As he notes, “diversity and difference … are rooted in real impaired bodies” (p. 811).

Embodiment understood this way encourages us to begin our work with an emphasis on bodies that are material, messy, limited, constrained, and broken. It seeks to ground our thinking about embodied life in ways that embrace its fractured, tragic, and beautiful complexity. It is to situate our theorizing at “the point where limitation and potential meet” because it is at this place that we are most truly human.

The Sport for Peace/Development Myth

“Sport for Peace”, “Sport and Development”, “Sport for Inclusion” are rhetorical and romanticized catchphrases which purport that marginalization, isolation, oppression, poverty, and numerous other hegemonically originated social situations can somehow be ended through sport. Sport is seemingly a key platform for social justice efforts, from Tommie Smith and John Carlos’ Black Power Salute in the 1968 Olympics to the adoption of numerous sports in different countries kneeling before events in protest of police brutality among persons of color, to Raven Saunders X protest at the 2020 Olympics to acknowledge and celebrate intersectionality. But why is sport assumed by contemporary humans to be a catalyst for social justice efforts?

Research and pedagogy in sport connect inquiries of racialization, intersectionality, and social justice. This social justice scholarship assumes that it is participating in an end-contribution to common good that will help to heal discriminatory beliefs and practices. While not implicitly labeled healing, such is unaffectedly understood (without elaboration). For example, in the first weeks of June 2020 anti-racist movements, in the sport segments of local and national news, sport features as a way to settle unrest and/or melt-away racial divisions. Sport (as societal element or phenomenon) is regularly either premised as polluted with ideologies (e.g., political, commercial, racial) or paradoxically (as in the news sport features) as key to community-societal healing.

Social justice studies related to sport overlook the essence of sport, include murky understandings of the phenomenon, errors in logic about it, and/or romanticized notions of sport's function. Even sport intellectuals have a tendency to accept what sport sociologist Jay Coakley brands the “great sport myth”. Coakley labels a difficulty to critically see sport-as-political as part of a “myth” which comprehends sport to be “inherently positive” with “flawed” individuals and infrastructures which must be “purged from sports so that goodness and purity will prevail” (Coakley, 2015, p. 11).

A first (uncritical) wave of sport for peace and development scholarship comprehended sport as a kind of liberator that reconciles individuals and societies (e.g., “sport can make an important contribution to public health; universal education; gender equality; poverty reduction; prevention of HIV and AIDS and other diseases; environmental sustainability as well as peace-building and conflict resolution” in Beutler, 2008, p. 359; sport “implemented to bridge deep-rooted socio-political divides” in Burnett, 2015, p. 388; and a 2020 Social Justice Through Sport and Exercise Psychology Symposium forwards sport as “empowering women”; and [offering] “vocational training for previously incarcerated persons” [Social Justice Through Sport and Exercise Psychology Symposium Program 2020; see also Serazio, 2019, p. 296; Hughson et al., 2005]). These archetypes of a continuing realm of scholarship show that sport and exercise are comprehended as positive entities yet with commercial and ideological faults that can be restored. Indeed, even in current critically sophisticated waves of study, much of present-day racial and social justice and Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) work begins with the assumption that sport mirrors society and we scholars must help to progress sport beyond current social troubles (e.g., Collison et al., 2016; Collison et al., 2019; Collison et al., 2020; Darnell, 2012, p. 147; Giulianotti et al., 2016; Giulianotti et al., 2019, pp. pp. 412–413; Magee & Jeanes 2011; Rossi & Jeanes, 2018, pp. 195–198; Trejo et al., 2017; Welty Peachey et al., 2018, pp. 768).

Sport in its communication of excellence, movement, the human condition, and sacrifice of energy may be what is important to the core of what it is to be human (Barthes, 2007; Bernard, 1972; Besnier & Brownell 2012; Birrell, 1981; Blanchard & Cheska, 1984; Caillois, 1958/2001; Eichberg, 1998; Geertz, 1972; Guttmann, 1978; Hanna, 1987; Hardy & Loy, 2009; Ingham, 2000; Ingham & Loy, 1974; James, 1963; Loy, 1968; Loy & Hesketh, 1984; Morford & Clark, 1976; Roberts et al., 1959; Sansone, 1988; Sartre, 1956; Suits, 1978; Sutton-Smith, 1997; Sydnor, 2010, 2015, 2017; Szymanski, 2006; Turner, 1982; Wertz, 1999). For example, the delivery of the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics games despite record numbers of Japanese citizens testing positive for COVID-19, and the outspoken disapproval by citizens that a sporting event take priority over people. The Olympics and Paralympics are a prime example of “Sport for Peace”. In what way then, is this mega event a space for social justice when it is potentially putting thousands of people at risk? Here we question the underlying motivations of Sport for Peace or Sport for Development; are such motivations pure or is this hyperbolic, disingenuous rhetoric to gain some monetary or symbolic capital?

Continuing with the Olympic Games and Paralympics as examples, bidding cities oftentimes state that hosting the games will be a catalyst to spur improvements to access, empowerment of marginalized communities, and pathways to participation of underrepresented groups such as girls, ethnic minorities and disabled groups (Brown & Pappous, 2018; Howe & Silva, 2018). The reality, however, is that those oppressed before sporting events remain so at their conclusion; oppressive infrastructures remain unchanged, the poorest are forcibly evicted to make room for new stadiums, they cannot afford access to the international events, marginalized groups remain forgotten, new sporting arenas are left empty, are too expensive to join, or are sold for another use, and larger gaps are created between the privileged and the marginalized (Horne, 2018).

Sport for peace/sport for development are taken-for-granted ideologies that fundamentally assume that sport in and of itself has the capacity to empower all oppressed groups, but there are more examples of sport privileging already dominant groups (such as male, nondisabled, middle classed, heterosexual groups) over others (Harrison et al., 2021). Efforts (including in popular culture and academe) to link sport with social justice (as well as the joining of patriotism, citizenship, masculinity, morality, nationalism, muscular Christianity, abstinence, and so forth with sport) are examples of improper sincere directions; mismeasures that assume a linear progression toward utopic ends (e.g., Buck-Morss, 1989; Sydnor, 2015). Matthew Adamson's opening section on the unmitigated tragedy of disability renders this idea in regard to embodiment. “Mismeasures” (e.g., believing that sport will bring peace to divided peoples, that disability will be cured) give humans hope, so criticism/deflation of these ideologies (such as by the authors of this manifesto), might appear heartless (e.g., Fagen & Sydnor, 2012; Sydnor, 2018). But we argue that in dismantling sport from its pseudo-sincere directions, sport is connected to multipart “real” philosophies of hope such as that forwarded by Martin Beck Matuštík:

The more one delves into hidden and at times dark recesses of the human odyssey, the more audibly and persistently the beckoning of hope calls … knowing all along that the human race cannot heal all wounds of history yet, freed from all pretensions to heroism, one's faith yields now not just to the deferrals, aporias and paradoxes of, but also to the exceeding, indeed saturating visitations from impossible hope. (Matuštík, 2008, pp. 23, 79. See also Solnit, 2016; Sydnor 2017, p. 6)

In the spirit of this manifesto's explication of sport, to paraphrase an influential New Yorker essay about climate change (Franzen, 2019), sport and exercise science academics can ask “what if we stopped pretending that injustices can be stopped?” (Or that peace and development can be built through sport?) Sport and exercise science could:

Understand sport cannot cure humanity (nor does sport need to be restored/fixed as much sport studies research assumes). Sport does place humans next to each other in little acts (in real time, virtually and/or imaginatively) just as do art, religion, military comradeship, and all communal activities, but that is as close as humans get to each other. Sport does not fuse together disparate values and beliefs, and it will not serve to eventually proceed along a continuum to make social justice. If scholars hold that sport uniquely has the capacity to forge peace and aid development (e.g., Collison et al., 2016; Collison et al., 2019; Collison et al., 2020; Giulianotti et al., 2019; Jarvie, 2021; Jarvie & Houston 2016; Svensson et al., 2020; Welty-Peachey et al., 2018; Welty-Peachey et al., 2020) then wide-ranging research to understand this specific function is necessary.

Exercise for Chronic Disease and Disability: The Exercise as Medicine Myth

How is “exercise is medicine” --a growing program and philosophical position among researchers and physicians emphasizing the primary role of exercise as preventive and curative treatment for a wide range of health concerns-- in conflict with social justice efforts central in the field of disability studies and disability activism?

Physical activity and exercise occupy a variety of different roles among disabled populations. Among these roles, sport is used to create heroes and specters out of disabled bodies, i.e. the “supercrip” trope (Chatfield & Cottingham, 2017; Rees et al., 2019), exercise is turned into rehabilitation and therapy (Kim, 2017), physical activity is encouraged to promote weight loss in overweight disabled individuals and prevent adverse health conditions such as diabetes and heart disease (Anderson & Heyne, 2010), and exercise generally is encouraged as a means to manage disability-related stigma (Arbour et al., 2007; McLaughlin & Coleman-Fountain, 2014)

These various roles differ from the contemporary roles of physical activity for the “able-bodied” population (which include the aforementioned roles as well as: to experience competence and autonomy (Burn & Niven, 2019), to experience nature (Calogiuri & Elliott, 2017), to improve bodily appearance (Fatt et al., 2019; Mailey et al., 2019), for stress management and revitalization (Mailey et al., 2018), and to induce weight loss (Benau et al., 2019) among many others. It is clear that much of the research interest in providing physical access to physical activity opportunities for disabled populations is motivated by the need to mitigate physical health problems (i.e. comorbidities including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obesity) that are more likely to occur among inactive adults, and not to provide access to physical activity regardless of form or motivation. Importantly “Exercise is Medicine” as a whole emphasizes the primacy of avoiding negative health outcomes through exercise for all individuals (able-bodied and disabled) (ACSM, 2017), and is argued by many to strip exercise of the complex meanings and values that motivate many to engage in exercise in the first place (Pullen & Malcolm, 2018; Williams & Gibson, 2018; Williams et al., 2018). Indeed, previous research indicates that only stress management and revitalization predict actual exercise behavior and autonomous motivation; motivations to exercise to promote good health or prevent illness is not strongly associated with actual exercise behavior (Segar et al, 2011). Furthermore, as another example, exercise motivations for immediate well-being but not health-related reasons predicts exercise behavior in parents (Mailey et al., 2018).

In this light, we pose the question, what are we providing access to when we focus on providing disabled individuals access to exercise opportunities? Much of exercise promotion contributes to a structure and ideology that disciplines bodies, eschews aging and bodily decay, promotes competition, and emphasizes the economic burden of physically inactive individuals, including inactive individuals with disabilities (Markula, 2003, 2014; Markula & Pringle, 2006). Social justice efforts to increase access only to exercise miss the opportunity to reimagine the varied roles exercise can play. To explore the implications of exercise promotion for medical reasons in a population experiencing disability, Brynn Adamson offers the example of multiple sclerosis (MS).

MS is a degenerative neurological disease affecting nearly 1 million individuals in the US (Wallin et al., 2019). There are four types of MS, with relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS) affecting roughly 80% of all persons with MS (Confavreux & Vukusic, 2006). RRMS is characterized by relatively stable periods with no disease activity interspersed with relapses (new or worsening symptoms). The episodic nature of symptoms in RRMS results in an in-between or liminal embodiment; situated in-between sick and well states, “able-bodied” and disabled. Because of this complicated embodiment, disabled identity in MS can be informed by notions of cure, management, and self-care behaviors that are grounded in social expectations of compulsory able-bodiedness (see (McRuer, 2006; McRuer & Johnson, 2014; Vick, 2013). People with MS may feel a sense of responsibility to maintain a non-disabled identity/status through self-care behaviors aimed at minimizing or reversing impairment (Adamson et al., 2017). Exercise is one such self-care behavior.

Exercise is often promoted to manage fatigue, improve walking mobility, manage cognitive and affective symptoms and increase muscle strength etc. – this is in line with MS-specific physical activity guidelines (Latimer-Cheung et al., 2013). In general, exercise is becoming increasingly medicalized thus constraining the meanings that exercise can have and reinforcing a responsible/irresponsible dichotomy for the active or insufficiently active.

Previous qualitative research among individuals with MS identifies varied roles of exercise including: to manage MS, enhance self-worth, feel productive, engage socially, prepare for participation in social events, relax, improve mental well-being. They also expressed several contradictions: exercise is a source of stress and source of relaxation, exercise prevents relapse and causes relapse, exercise is energizing and fatiguing, exercise helps them work towards a “whole” physical self and contributes to a fractured self-concept. Furthermore, exercise has a role in disability identity navigation: exercise is believed to prevent future disability, reverse current disability, exercise is an experience where inaccessibility and ableism are experienced, it contributes to disbelief of symptoms by others, and exercise represents a source of loss contributing to negative orientation to MS (Adamson, 2018).

Based on these findings, Adamson proposed a paradigm shift – away from exercise as disciplinary (consistent with the Exercise is Medicine model), to exercise as a resource. Exercise as discipline (current paradigm) is productive, it emphasizes individual responsibility and mind over matter, results in guilt and shame over inactivity/non-compliance, it views disability as loss, and the ultimate goal is health and/or fitness. Exercise as resource (new paradigm) is creative, emphasizes social accessibility of exercise opportunities (physically accessible spaces and socially accessible spaces), would be empowering (in emphasizing autonomy, choice and deliberate decisions), would be used as a means to experience disability/impairment differently (i.e. a new embodied experience), and consistent with above-mentioned research, exercise as resource would emphasize personally meaningful goals rather than constrained goals of health and fitness (and disability management).

To implement this paradigm in the context of MS and targeting the interpersonal level of an ecological model framework, Adamson developed a group exercise program for individuals with MS; Adam (Adamson et al., 2017). This program, MOVE MS, seeks to foster disability identity navigation through education, disability-conscious language, social support, autonomy and peer-delivery and addresses the most common barriers to exercise in this population – especially physical and social inaccessibility of exercise spaces. MOVE MS provides a social environment to navigate an identity as disabled, a program that increases exercise self-efficacy and experiences with many forms of movement to enhance autonomy and enjoyment of exercise. The intention of this program is to provide exercise experiences that improve wellbeing during the classes, and do not focus on prevention of disability progression.

In short, a new exercise paradigm would mirror Sydnor's statement that [exercise/movement] is a ritual innate to humankind, but it cannot cure [bodies]. When exercise science focuses on the curative or therapeutic benefits of exercise alone in reference to disabled bodies, violence to those bodies and those identities is wrought (Kim, 2017). No amount of physical access to this structure can “cure” disability. Rather, the categories of able-bodied and disabled will be further reified and values of those who “take advantage” of increased access to therapeutic or medicinal exercise will further reinforce individual responsibility for prevention of negative health or impairment consequences.

To conclude this section, individuals with chronic disease and disability inhabit a devalued status. When healthcare providers, public health workers, industries (fitness, healthcare and otherwise) encourage self-care (e.g. exercise and physical activity) behaviors, there is often a devaluing of the individual as they currently are; a sense that the individual is responsible for their current state or at least responsible for getting better – a return to the Health Imperative (Rail & Jette, 2015). This occurs in a context where self-care behaviors are often inaccessible which makes the burden of responsibility for their improvement even greater. Social justice efforts to increase access to exercise opportunities can and should also seek to understand how individuals perceive and internalize these messages, how to present alternative messages that do not contribute to ableism and compulsory ablebodiedness (McRuer, 2010), and to provide access to opportunities for social engagement (more on this and the concept of healthism is discussed in Richardson's essay pertaining to challenging dis/ableism in the gym). Providing access to exercise as the ultimate goal of social justice efforts in exercise psychology will reify medicalized and therapeutic messages of compulsory ablebodiedness for individuals inhabiting an (un)ambiguously disabled embodiment.

Instead, exercise researchers, programmers, healthcare providers etc. need to expand understandings of access that resist continued emphasis on the curative components of exercise and making spaces “technically accessible” (Adamson et al., 2020.). Instead, with a paradigm that focuses on exercise as resource, this community in connection with disabled individuals can provide opportunity for what Mia Mingus calls “Access Intimacy”.

Access intimacy is that elusive, hard to describe feeling when someone else “gets” your access needs. The kind of eerie comfort that your disabled self feels with someone on a purely access level…It could also be the way your body relaxes and opens up with someone when all your access needs are being met. It is not dependent on someone having a political understanding of disability, ableism or access. (Mingus, 2011, para. 4).

For exercise to have a role in social justice for disabled people, it must value disability. Access to exercise cannot serve the goal of disappearing disability and impairment. If that is the goal of access to exercise, it is not about social justice. Mingus invites us to reframe where solidarity can be practiced. Instead of ensuring disabled people simply have access to therapeutic and medicinal exercise, we can work with this community to understand how movement can be a resource and cultivate access intimacy in our programming, research and community efforts.

“Inclusion is not a strategy to help people fit into the systems and structures which exist in our societies; it is about transforming those systems and structures to make it better for everyone.” -Diane Richler, Past President, Inclusion International.

Social (in)Justice in the Gym: Dismantling Disablism and the Healthism Myth

For persons with physical impairments, exercise is essential for improvement and maintenance of health, wellness and quality of life (Martin Ginis et al., 2012). Access to exercise opportunities, however, are particularly problematic for this population due to environmental, cultural and societal barriers (Richardson et al., 2016). Take, for example, the gym. For persons with impairments, “the gym” may be an ideal space to exercise as it is a controlled environment with specialized equipment, health and safety regulations, and qualified instructors (Sassatelli, 2010). Moreover, for people with acquired physical impairments, the gym is a meaningful and familiar space as in-patient physical rehabilitation takes place in a rehabilitation gym (Williams et al., 2014), which can prepare individuals for integration back into society, and lay the foundation for long term exercise behavior (Day & Wadey, 2016). In a non-rehabilitative context, however, “the gym” is a space perceived to openly discriminate and exclude disabled people.

This is not the case for each gym, however at its essence, “the gym” is a space where ableism is weaved into the sociocultural fabric. Ableism frames images, policy and practices as if all people are “able-bodied” (Campbell, 2009) and portrays a standard of physical being that is not only accepted but expected, and rejects variation from this norm (Wolbring, 2008). In context, the gym sells itself as a space where the toned, esthetic, muscular body can be crafted through hard work and physical labor (Neville & Gorman, 2016). This “fit” body image is reproduced through images, discourse, and the bodies and actions of gym employees (Harvey et al., 2014); those that do not match this image do not “fit” according to ableist gym values (Crossley, 2006). As such, ableism excludes and discriminates the disabled body (Loja et al.. 2013). Linking strongly to ableism – and Brynn Adamson's exploration of “exercise is medicine”, as well as Caitlin Clarke's problematization of exercise interventions – is the neoliberal global imperative of “healthism”, which in contemporary times refers to the construction and reinforcement of certain practices and ways of being “healthy” promoted through health and fitness industry. Healthism perpetuates areas, such as gyms, as health commodities and as necessary pursuits for responsible citizens to be take ownership of their wellbeing, make personal choices regarding their health and take a moral stance on sedentary and obesity related illnesses (Harrison et al., 2021). In doing so, however, this concept obscures issues of exclusion, privilege, and social inequalities in relation to maintaining health. Further, healthism is a dominantly Western trend and values sameness, competition, self-control, and self-discipline. Thus, even if an individual engages in healthy lifestyle choice, any person living a different narrative of health is still excluded. The intersection of ableism and healthism in a space like the gym can result in various forms of oppression and discriminatory practices.

The experience of these exclusory and discriminatory practices and its resulting effects can be further expanded through the concept of disablism; in other words, the social oppression that disabled people are subject to due to ableist practices and attitudes (Goodley, 2016). Disablism arises in two forms; indirect psychoemotional disablism relating to structural barriers and exclusory messages these send, and direct psychoemotional disablism pertaining to negative relationships and interactions a disabled individual has with others (Reeve, 2012; Thomas, 2007). Disablism in the gym is apparent in numerous ways. Indirectly, structural barriers such as lack of access, unsuitable equipment and facilities (Dickson et al.) do more than bar entry and participation to the gym, but act as landscapes of exclusion (Kitchin, 1998) sending messages that disabled people are not wanted and do not belong. Directly, negative interactions with members and staff such as being stared at, ignored, and laughed at can leave disabled people feeling intimidated, hurt, excluded, and upset (Reeve, 2006). Though inherently a negative experience for disabled persons, positioning the exclusion of disabled people in the gym as a form of social oppression does provide a platform and opportunity for social justice.

Over the past 4 years, Richardson has focused on potential ways to dismantle disablism in the gym. Her work encompasses qualitative explorations with disabled persons, disabled instructors and able-bodied instructors working within franchise gyms, leisure centers, community centers, and adapted rehabilitation centers in the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US). In the next section, she consolidates her work to highlight some different occurrences of social injustices in the gym, the myth of healthism as one way of being, proposes some ways to address these injustices, and also critiques these suggestions highlighting the expansive, complex effort that is required to improve inclusion of disabled persons within the gym. These suggestions are not an exhaustive list, but she hopes a modest starting point for critical thought and dialog regarding praxis of inclusion within exercise spaces.

Four key ways that have the potential to dismantle disablism in the gym are 1) amplifying relatable gym narratives, 2) employing disabled instructors, 3) recruiting allies, and 4) creating inclusive spaces.

The Limits of Exercise Interventions: The Exercise is Cost-Effective Myth

Within exercise psychology, depression is one of the most heavily researched health issues in contemporary research (Biddle, Mutrie & Gorely, 2015). As a field, we are convinced that exercise is effective at improving mental health such that some claim those with criticisms simply do not properly understand depression and/or exercise interventions and encourage us to advocate for exercise regardless of mental health outcome due to the overwhelming evidence of the other health benefits accrued by regular exercise and physical activity (Biddle et al., 2015; Lavallee et al., 2012). Yet, as Synthia Sydnor's work outlines above and elsewhere (Sydnor, 2015), what constitutes the entities we call sport, exercise, and physical activity frequently remain static and unquestioned. Brynn Adamson's work on MS and Emma Richardson's work on adaptive gyms are further demonstration of the need to reconsider what we mean when we use such terms. Who do we mean to include, or unintentionally exclude, in using physical activity and exercise interventions? Caitlin Clarke's work on exercise interventions for depression offer further insight into ways we may consider this question of what constitutes physical activity and who we believe are most in need of physical activity interventions (Clarke, 2019, Clarke & Adamson, 2021).

While Clarke tends to agree that exercise and physical activity clearly provides some mental health benefits for some people, she also finds such claims rooted in an apparent lack of consideration of a lengthy history of mental illness (Ehrenberg, 2010; Lawlor, 2012; Radden, 2000) and the associated sociological research (Dumit, 2012; Horwitz & Wakefield, 2007; Karp, 2017; Lakoff, 2007; Martin, 2007; Mendenhall, 2013; Mendenhall, 2016). The absence of such literature could be a result of a variety of factors that exercise science researchers are currently not able to isolate.

Thus, instead of seeking to dive into one scholar, research group, journal, institution, conference, etc., Clarke seeks instead to offer some considerations for the consequences of continuing to promote “exercise anyway” without a critically self-reflexive lens. There appear to be two primary potential consequences. First, there is the issue of the “inequality paradox” (Williams & Gibson, 2018; Frohlich & Potvin, 2008), meaning that all too often health interventions aid socially advantaged groups in becoming healthier while either not aiding socially disadvantaged groups to the extent anticipated and/or further exacerbating the original disparity between groups. Second, there is potential for creating structural violence (Farmer et al., 2006) via uncritical design and implementation of exercise intervention programs. When describing structural violence, Paul Farmer explains,

The term “structural violence” is one way of describing social arrangements that put individuals and populations in harm's way. The arrangements are structural because they are embedded in the political and economic organization of our social world; they are violent because they cause injury to people (typically, not those responsible for perpetuating such inequalities). With few exceptions, clinicians are not trained to understand such social forces, nor are we trained to alter them. (Farmer et al., 2006, p.1686)

Apart from Williams & Gibson (2017), few have considered the inequality paradox in the context of exercise interventions and instead tend to consider other global health interventions (Kotsila & Saravanan, 2017; Maju et al., 2019; Singer et al., 2017). However, these authors and others from the special issue of Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health (2018), clearly outline the ways in which exercise interventions provide benefits for some but not all (Williams & Gibson, 2018). To date, none have considered the issue of the inequality paradox or the issue of structural violence in the context of exercise interventions for mental health specifically. We suggest that a reconsideration of mental health interventions in exercise and sport psychology are a crucial opportunity to better address social and structural inequalities and advocate for social justice.

To do so, we must first consider who the people are who most often suffer from poor mental health, and depression specifically. For example, while the World Health Organization often claims that between 350–400 million people worldwide suffer from depression it is often unclear who those people are. When considering the United States more specifically, the National Center for Health Statistics Data Brief claims that 7.6% of Americans aged 12 and over suffer from depression and that it most often affects women between 40–59 and people living below the poverty line - this group was 2.5 times more likely to have depression (Pratt & Brody 2014). A closer examination of this data brief highlights that it is not just women and people living in poverty but specifically people of color living in poverty. When taken together with other sources highlighting the high prevalence rates of mental illness in the poor and homeless (Magee & Jeanes, 2011; Pratt & Brody, 2014; Trejo Attali & Magee, 2017) and those who have clearly documented the negative physical and mental health impacts of experiences of racism (Brown, 2008; Geronimus et al., 2006; Thoits, 2010; Williams, 2018; Williams & Sternthal, 2010) it is both surprising and concerning that there is such an absence in the exercise and sport psychology research. As well, something that both the National Center for Health Statistics Data Brief and our field should consider is the negative impact of discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer groups – something else that has been well documented by both social scientists and nonprofit groups alike (Hart et al., 2019; NAMI, 2019; Russell & Fish, 2016). In stark contrast, exercise science research on depression tends not to report demographic data beyond age and sex, especially in meta-analyses, making any nuanced interpretations with the above concerns more difficult.

Messner and Solomon (1993) have long encouraged sport sociologists to always consider what is “outside of the frame” and attempt to consider the implications of not including the things that are outside the frame. In this case, we must acknowledge and grapple with the fact that the majority of exercise intervention research participants appear to be middle class and white if only due to this being generally common for university-based research (Prescott, 2002). What this means, then, is that research focused on exercise interventions for depression are not clearly addressing the groups who most often suffer from depression. Furthermore, such an omission makes it impossible for such intervention research to adequately consider the social factors that impact and exacerbate depression for low socioeconomic status groups, people of color, and LGBTQ groups.

For example, in the current moment of the COVID-19 pandemic, multiple news sources including some written by exercise science researchers have suggested that at-home exercise programs can help improve mental health during quarantine and while practicing physical distancing measures (Ducharme, 2020; Hoerster & Rosenberg, 2020; Huang, 2020). While this recommendation is likely useful for at least some people, it is far from able to accommodate for larger social and structural problems facing citizens in the Detroit, Michigan, area who have suffered from water shut-offs related to struggles paying plumbing repairs and associated utility bills (Einhorn 2020; Lakhani 2020). Exercising will not bring back the water which these citizens need in order to follow centers for disease control and WHO guidelines for handwashing as a preventive measure against COVID-19. However, pandemics are not the only instance in which exercise interventions are limited in their capacity to reduce depressive symptoms, particularly when the intervention does not specifically address social factors such as discrimination or structural barriers such as having safe, well-lit spaces with clean air in one's neighborhood to be physically active. Acknowledging and working to address these social justice issues is an opportunity to intervene in our own field, not only to improve the well-being of multiple marginalized groups but to improve the field overall and encourage new collaborations and new directions.

In the case of exercise interventions for mental health, Caitlin Clarke suggests there are several specific areas for improvement both immediate and long-term. In short, these come down to a critical and self-reflexive consideration of who we think is most in need of exercise interventions and how we individually and collectively think about such groups of people – how do you conceptualize who your research participants are?

Thinking reflexively on this question leads to additional questions because this initial question necessarily requires us to also consider who we think should and could ultimately benefit from our research on exercise interventions. To answer such questions, we must also consider our own individual positions as researchers in this field. Some crucial reflections include:

Where do we each fit, as individuals, with respect to the groups whom we have identified as most in need of exercise interventions?

Currently this cascade of questions is largely unaddressed and, as a result, leaves it unclear who the research on mental health benefits. This is where the potential for structural violence (Farmer et al., 2006) and the inequality paradox (Williams & Gibson, 2017; Frohlich & Potvin, 2008) come into play. Uncritical promotion of exercise interventions for depression leave room for reinforcing negative stereotypes about persons with mental illness, including but not limited to lack of motivation and a negative economic impact on health care systems. The potential for harm is especially apparent when we consider the frequent use of community participants without clinical diagnoses, leading to the conflation of depressive symptoms and major depressive disorder within the research participant pools (Cooney et al., 2013). Indeed, when exercise interventions work, they seem to work well for people with mild symptoms. This specific group are also statistically more likely to be people who are above the poverty line, white, and heterosexual. Consequently, we create, perhaps inadvertently, a structure of exercise interventions that benefit the groups of people who were already generally socially advantaged while suggesting that those for whom exercise interventions do not work are probably just not motivated enough to engage in regular physical activity; a repeated argument of privilege versus oppression throughout our manifesto. This would be less concerning if not for the major influence of the research in this area such as Blumenthal et al. (2007), which suggests that exercise is as effective as anti-depressant medication. Such claims are worrisome when one considers the way in which such arguments could filter into insurance claims policies for mental health care.

If we – the field of exercise science, kinesiology, sport studies - could better incorporate the critical self-reflexive approach outlined above into the design and implementation of intervention research, it seems we would also more consistently avoid reproducing structural violence. Until then, we should indeed continue to be wary of the promotion of “exercising anyway.”

Conclusion

This manifesto:

dismantles some myths in studies of sport, exercise, play; disabilities;