127939 20250210083428.0 doi 10.1080/19406940.2023.2242874 sideral 135114 ART-2023-135114 eng Malcolm, Dominic The World Health Organization, physical activity and the contradictions of neoliberal health promotion 2023 Access copy available to the general public Unrestricted This article constitutes the first holistic exploration of how neoliberalism permeates and manifests in Physical Activity Health Promotion (PAHP). It synthesises a critical analysis of neoliberalism with the sociological concepts of medicalisation and healthism and draws on three distinct phases and methods of data collection, to more adequately understand the development, prominence and largely uncritical acceptance of this domain of global public health. Specifically, it demonstrates how the World Health Organization’s (WHO) initial promotion of PAHP coincided with the organisation’s strategic re-alignment with neoliberal principles within a changing geopolitical landscape. Then, deploying a critical discourse analysis of the recent and globally significant WHO (2020) Guidelines on Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour, it shows how the underlying logics of neoliberalism continue to inform not only the intended policy goals but the inclusion and exclusion of certain types of evidence used to justify and evaluate policy. Subsequently, drawing on qualitative interview data and time-series survey data the article details how neoliberalism fosters the ideology of healthism, how this promotes forms of exercise which diverge from health maximising behaviours, and how this extends differences in physical activity uptake across the population, and therefore embeds the health inequalities PAHP is explicitly claimed to address. Outlining why PAHP, in particular, holds appeal for the WHO, we conclude that neoliberalism has both enabled the rapid development and broad political acceptance of PAHP, but concomitantly leads to outcomes which limit and confound the broader policy goals. info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess by-nc-nd http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/ 0.683 2023 Social Sciences (miscellaneous) 2023 Q1 Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality Management 2023 Q2 3.6 2023 info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion Marcén, Celia Universidad de Zaragoza (orcid)0000-0001-5485-881X Pullen, Emma 4009 775 Universidad de Zaragoza Dpto. Psicología y Sociología Área Sociología 16, 4 (2023), 593-607 International Journal of Sport Policy 1940-6959 401531 http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/127939/files/texto_completo.pdf Versión publicada 2169814 http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/127939/files/texto_completo.jpg?subformat=icon icon Versión publicada oai:zaguan.unizar.es:127939 articulos driver 2025-02-10-08:31:22 ARTICLE