Sedentariness is...

Abstract

This text is a critical analysis of the construction of sedentary behavior and lifestyle, or "sedentariness," that circulates in the scientific literature pertaining to the field of physical activity and health in Brazil. It highlights two "families" of sedentary types that came into being in two specific historical moments: the "cooperian" sedentary, who derives from the precepts of physical fitness disseminated in Brazil at the beginning of the 1970s by Kenneth Cooper; the "agitonian" sedentary, who emerged in the mid-1990s out of the guidelines for moderate physical activity propagated in Brazil, most notably by the Agita São Paulo health program. Among the various possible readings of this body of scholarship is that it constructs sedentariness as a catalyst for many "negative" outcomes - it is portrayed as a silent scourge that slowly poisons the body and weakens the soul.