EVALUATION COMMITTEE

The Faculty Council has appointed the following adjudication committee to evaluate the thesis and the associated lecture: 

• Professor Louise Mansfield, Brunel University, UK
• Professor Eivind Skille, Universitetet i Innlandet, Norway

Chairman: Associate professor Patrik Kjærsdam Telleus, HST, Aalborg University

Moderator: Professor Sine Agergaard, HST, Aalborg University

ABSTRACT

In their attempts to promote physical activity (PA) among people with so-called “lifestyle” diseases, such as Type 2 diabetes (T2D), Danish municipalities increasingly seek to establish collaborations with voluntarily organized sports clubs. These attempts seem mired in certain normative presumptions about PA promotion, healthcare, and collaboration. Rooted in Habermas’s theory of communicative action and based on critical ethnographic fieldwork, I explore the reasons of healthcare workers, sports club volunteers, and people with T2D for engaging in collective practices in relation to PA promotion and healthcare, trying to establish empirical grounds for normative discussions. Throughout the thesis, I argue, based on the ethics inherent to the theory of communicative action, that any attempt at establishing collaborations or providing healthcare should start with attempts at understanding the perspectives of those we want to collaborate with and those we want to help. Furthermore, I discuss adverse situations that might arise when attempts at collaboration and healthcare are instead guided by utilitarian goals of maximizing PA or health. Ultimately, my aim is to reimagine current practices of collaboration, healthcare, and PA promotion in light of Habermas’ theory of communicative action and its inherent critique of functionalist reason.