Regimen:A Body Practice Engendering The Construction Of Self-Identity And Responsibility Ethics

Regimen recently becomes a fashion, but few sociological researches get into this subject. Most of sporadic research has seen regimen as a cultural phenomenon and discussed the external operating mechanism. So that hides the activities and experience of the body, which can’t reflect the value of people’s daily experiences during the social change period in China. This study attempts to compensate for the shortcomings. It takes regimen as a body programming in a perspective of embodied or phenomenological cognition and place the phenomenon of regimen under era of risk and post-traditional society, so as to reveal the process of recognition and practices in micro level and to explore the construction of body experience and self-identity. This study finds 8 regimen doyen citizens of Shenzhen aged at 25-50 by snowball method as research subjects and use a method of structured interviews to collect empirical materials.Firstly, this article demonstrates diversified concepts and exercise of regimen. Different with the outlandish viewpoint in media outlets, regimen has become a doyens’ life style. This conclusion relates to people’s ages, education levels, employment,family condition and opportunities of health-education. Furthermore, Interviewees describe a very individual regimen discourse which is highly relevant into family traditions and private life experience.Secondly, this article observes that the interviewees get a relieve in the experience of regime, like fatigue, muscle pain and soreness, sorrow and so on through an extensive range of regimen activities. This is a vivid, pure and private body experience and it brings people closer with their bodies closer. Also, the physical feedback of body becomes a new language under the identity crisis in modern society. Body full of spirit and energy is a physical status of people looking for. It has become a metaphor for a particular social formation, reflecting individual’s concerns and aspirations in the real world.Thirdly, this article discusses the relationship between regimen and self-identity, citizenship and subjectivity. It finds out that regimen practices on one hand roots from self-care and self-reflection, and on the other hand engenders individual self-identity. Fashion of body programming is normal phenomenon in a post-traditional society. Moreover, regimen doyens not only share and collaborate with others on health management and lifestyle, but also fulfill a kind of civic responsibility towards wider social community. To a certain extent, this way of self-identity construction rooting from body sensibility makes individual ethics of responsibility and social participation a possibility under era of risk.