Fitness Capitalism examines what happens when exercise becomes mandatory in the workplace.
Overwork and burnout have become almost synonymous with professional ambition. But an intriguing countermovement has taken hold: Companies that require employees not to work harder but to work out. Drawing on fieldwork at the Swedish sportswear company Björn Borg—where compulsory gym sessions and biannual fitness tests replace the grind of long hours—Torkild Thanem develops the concept of "fitness capitalism," a managerial ideology that seeks to maximize performance and profit by cultivating its workforce's physical fitness.
Thanem shows that fitness capitalism promises to resolve one of capitalism's defining contradictions: how its relentless drive for productivity exhausts the very workers it depends on. Inside Björn Borg, he finds a culture where employees both embrace and are strained under the demand that they become the best version of themselves in the gym and on the job. Rich with ethnographic detail and storytelling, Fitness Capitalism raises urgent questions about what it means to live—and labor—well.
