Shaping the Child as a Healthy Child

Abstract

Although health surveillance in schools is not a new phenomenon, surveillance has arguably intensified in the contemporary historical moment. As individuals and professional collectivities coalesce around the concern for youth health, surveillant mechanisms proliferate within the educational context. In this article, I critically examine the "Youth Health Survey" (YHS) administered in Manitoba (Canada), to illustrate how youth health is deployed as a mechanism for engaging interand intraprofessional knowledge in tightening the biopedagogical discourse surrounding youth health. In Manitoba, these biopedagogical networks and lessons arise from the body data gathered through the surveillant mechanism of the YHS resulting in the formation of public partnerships, resource sharing, and collaborative approaches to intervene in youth lives, both inside and outside the school, forming a "surveillant assemblage" of youth health. Using qualitative data from interview and focus groups with health professionals and education specialists, I illustrate how an ever-tightening web of professional networks invested in shaping the future of youth lives connect through the development and deployment of a health surveillance tool.

A New Materialist Analysis of Health and Fitness Social Media, Gender and Body Disaffection: ‘You Shouldn’t Compare Yourself to Anyone… but Everyone Does’

“…(Maggie, female, 16, white South African) For some, remaining entangled in these digital health assemblages can constrain capacity for more positive relations with their bodies/food, or what might be recognised in existing frameworks and literature as 'body disaffection'. In some cases, this can manifest as trauma to the body, through which disaffection is experienced and managed via more extreme measures such as disordered eating or over-exercising or by working on their bodies as a 'boundaryless project' [55], with no limits:…”