Physical Culture, Biopolitics, and Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City
摘要
This chapter, using the lens of biopolitical physical culture, revisits Sir Ebenezer Howard’s presentation of his “Garden City” town planning diagram in his 1898 treatise To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform. The focus of the chapter is twofold. First, the chapter considers the role of physical culture in Howard’s influential vision of the Garden City and its intended function as a biopolitical strategy for the resettlement and regeneration of the urban working-class in turn-of-the-century Britain. Second, the chapter unpacks some of the important intellectual, philosophical, and spiritual influences on Howard’s thinking to better understand their notions of physical culture and “healthy living” and how they became part of the diagram. Particular attention is paid to Howard’s understanding of social and physical degeneration in industrial cities and conception of the natural healthfulness of a “feminized” English countryside, resulting in a planning diagram that assumed the healthfulness of middle-class, bucolic forms of recreation and physical culture.