Charting the wellness society in Europe. Social transformations in health, sport and consumption

Wellness concept offers today a new key to describe and understand the social contest in which we live. From the transformation process of wellbeing over the last century in particular, the wellness dimension has grown so much that it involves not only individuals, but also the community and the environment. Exploring the wellness phenomenon today means tackling a rapidly growing frontier theme that strongly distinguishes contemporary “sportscape”. Nowadays sport and physical activity represent cultural tools able to understand the evolution of contemporary symbolic practices, always seeking for wellness. In particular, they are important because they help to broaden the concept of well-being, whereby through sports practice it turns into improving the "quality of life". Hence the consideration that wellness relates to a concept of healthy life, in which sporting activities are the main means of staying healthy, physically and psychically. Wellness as practices and knowledge oriented towards a "good life": a healthy existence, that is aimed to a more authentic and socially adequate concept of well-being. The book examines all these aspects, going beyond the concept of active lifestyle, investigating the importance of physical activities in order to keep being healthy, with a comparative look between Italy, France and the United Kingdom.