Charting the Wellness Society in Europe.

Wellness concept offers today a new key to describe and understand the social contest in which we live. From the transformation process of wellbeing over the last century in particular, the wellness dimension has grown so much that it involves not only individuals, but also the community and the environment.
The socio-cultural change laying behind these transformations involves the progressive expansion of the concept of sustainable well-being in the global society, which appears increasingly related to life chances and the spread of "wellness culture".
Exploring the wellness phenomenon today means tackling a rapidly growing frontier theme that strongly distinguishes contemporary "sportscape". Nowadays sport and physical activity represent cultural tools able to understand the evolution of contemporary symbolic practices, always seeking for wellness. In particular, they are important because helps to broaden the concept of well-being, whereby through sports practice it turns on into improving the "quality of life".
Hence the consideration that wellness relates to a concept of healthy life, in which sporting activities are the main means of staying healthy, physical and psychic. Wellness as practices and knowledge oriented towards a "good life": a healthy existence, that is aimed to a more authentic and socially adequate concept of well-being. Wellness culture therefore highlights how the important connection between sport, health and society defines the main welfare strategy of European people in different life spheres: health, well-being, work, consumption, etc.
The book examines all these aspects, going beyond the concept of active lifestyle, investigating the importance of physical activities in order to keep being healthy, with a comparative look between Italy, France and the United Kingdom.

Giovanna Russo, PhD in Sociology and Political Sciences, she currently teaches Sociology of Wellness at "AMS" University of Bologna - Italy (Rimini campus). Her main topic of research: wellbeing, practices of sport and physical activities, sporty consumption and communication, disability, wellness, migration and religion. Other books for this editorial board: La società della wellness. Corpi sportivi al traguardo della salute (2011); Questioni di benessere. Pratiche emergenti di cultura, sport, consumi (2013).