Wellness Washing: Wellness, Work and the Transformation of Pleasure

Abstract

Wellness has moved beyond its original emancipatory roots to become a mechanism for self-optimisation. In this chapter, the authors examine how wellness transforms or ‘wellness washes’ pleasurable practices into rationalised and instrumentalised ones. The authors argue that one of the key drivers of ‘wellness washing’ is the entanglement of wellness with and in contemporary workplaces. In advance of this analysis, the authors examine digital pleasures, ASMR and digital drugs to examine how pleasures mediated and afforded by the screen are ‘wellness washed’ to better position them as normative cultural practices.

Citation

Smith, N., Maddox, A., Davis, J.L. and Barratt, M. (2024), "Wellness Washing: Wellness, Work and the Transformation of Pleasure", Smith, N., Southerton, C. and Clark, M. (Ed.) Researching Contemporary Wellness Cultures, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 95-109. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80455-584-220241007