Paper short abstract:

With a focus on a community fitness association, this paper attends to the formation of health-conscious subjectivities in a changing health landscape. Locating new informal networks of care within histories of mutual aid, it approaches (healthy) future-making as a relational and embodied process.

Paper long abstract:

The African continent is undergoing what global health observers describe as an "epidemiological transition", as "non-communicable diseases" that were once predominantly found in industrialized nations increasingly also afflict communities across the global South. In Mozambique, the rise in overweight-related health issues has coincided with the emergence of a thriving fitness industry. Aside from the initiatives of fitness entrepreneurs who are seizing new livelihood opportunities, the changing health landscape has also inspired the formation of grassroots collectives aimed at getting people to exercise in the name of health. Bringing together mainly older women suffering from overweight-related health issues who meet on a regular basis in outdoor public spaces, these collectives also provide support in times of bereavement and illness, not to mention diversion and high sociality. Based on ethnographic research on the community fitness association So Porque Somos (Just Because We Are) which operates in a popular neighborhood of the city of Inhambane, this paper attends to the formation of health-conscious subjectivities in a changing health landscape. Locating these informal networks of care within longer histories of mutual aid, it approaches (healthy) future-making as a relational and embodied process.