Nothing in Excess: Physical Activity, Health, and Life World in Senegalese Fulani Male Pastoralists, a Mixed Method Approach.

OBJECTIVES: The goal of this study was to evaluate the application of the short form of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire Survey (IPAQ-SF) in the rural Senegalese Fulani pastoralist population by combining quantitative and qualitative methods. DESIGN AND PARTICIPANTS: For the quantitative method, 101 men completed the IPAQ-SF questionnaire measuring moderate, vigorous, and walking physical activity. Self-rated health, BMI, and sociodemographic variables were also collected. With regard to the qualitative methods, a total of 22 participants were recruited and interviewed. Four themes were addressed, including (i) physical activity (PA) and its definition, description, related experiences, and representations of social actors; (ii) PA and health; (iii) PA and sport; and (iv) the body and Fulani world of life (i.e., Pulaagu/Ndimaagu). RESULTS: Sahelian herders have a high level of self-reported PA and a low amount of daily sitting time. The measure of PA as proposed by the IPAQ-SF is not adapted to the Senegalese Ferlo pastoralists, mainly because this scale gives too much importance to leisure-time PA, perceived as unproductive energy expenditure, which is factually and symbolically antinomic to the Fulani lifeworld. Thus, neither intense nor moderate PA is related to self-rated health. However, sedentary lifestyles are linked to self-rated health and, therefore, to mortality and morbidity in Fulani pastoralists. Finally, walking, which is the dominant PA during transhumance and herd surveillance, is related to BMI. It therefore represents a protective factor against the occurrence of overweight and associated chronic non-communicable diseases. CONCLUSION: The mixed method approach developed in this study has shown that the IPAQ-SF is not a valid measure of PA in the population of Fulani male herders from the Ferlo region, given that unproductive energy expenditure is incompatible with the Fulani way of life, which condemns excess and immoderation.

Demographic aging and biopower.

The aging of the world's population is an unprecedented recent phenomenon in human history, as for millennia - at least from the Neolithic to the mid-18th century - the age structures of human populations have changed little. The question posed by this anthropological perspective seems at first sight quite simple: how did this aging come to be? We will see that from a demographic point of view, the answer seems trivial: a basic shift in population structure is at the origin. However, we will go further by exploring the historical and political conditions of this transition by mobilizing the Foucauldian notion of biopower. We argue that this notion has the heuristic advantage of linking several core processes at work in the demographic transition. Although our analysis focuses on France to illustrate the notion of biopower in Foucault's work, we also discuss several non-western societies to explain why demographic aging is inevitable across the globe due to biopower strategies and "dispositifs". This article also constitutes a reflexive analysis on our practices as gerontologists and on the widespread "successful aging" concept.

The paradox of impossible beauty: body changes and beauty practices in aging women.

The aim of this article is to describe and understand the experience of aesthetic body changes in women between 65 and 75 years old. To approach the issue, 29 in-depth interviews were conducted in Marseille in 2011. Following a brief review of contemporary Western aesthetics, we will examine the marks of time women perceive as stigmatizing and analyze beauty practices that aim to conceal or repair them. The last part of this article will be devoted to the experience of the aesthetic body and in particular show how aging can paradoxically have a beneficial effect on some women.