Abstract
Lifestyle modifications through a range of health care practices are considered central to the management, control and prevention of chronic non-communicable diseases. While there is a critical perspective on the epistemologies of such global health discourses in existing literature, empirical evidence on how people engage with such prescriptive lifestyle modifications in different cultural contexts is very limited. The paper in this context draws on illness narratives of heart patients to discuss about the anxiety and uncertainty expressed by patients and others about notions of what constitutes ‘healthy’ and ‘risky’. It specifically unpacks the global-local dynamics in the construction of risk and healthy lifestyle and examines the contexts in which such global discourses are embodied, resisted or negotiated in different cultural contexts. The paper also examines how global health discourses travel to local sites through popular press. The paper draws on evidence collected through analyzing two Indian national English dailies and in-depth interviews with heart patients and their family members in Delhi, India in 2007-2008.
Highlights
Lifestyle modifications through a range of health care practices are considered central to the management, control and prevention of chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disorders which are often termed as ‘lifestyle diseases’
Lifestyle modifications in dominant public health discourse imply that individuals are largely responsible for their own health, being able to lead healthy lives by engaging with a range of health care practices including healthy diet; being physically active; managing stress; controlling obesity; undertaking regular screening check-ups, etc., The rationale for a healthy lifestyle lies in the epidemiological evidence on the nature of risk factors for most of the chronic non-communicable diseases
Our analysis demonstrates the global-local dynamics in the construction of risk and healthy lifestyle, and how the media acts as an important mechanism through which global discourses travel to local sites
Summary
Lifestyle modifications through a range of health care practices are considered central to the management, control and prevention of chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disorders which are often termed as ‘lifestyle diseases’. Lifestyle modifications in dominant public health discourse imply that individuals are largely responsible for their own health, being able to lead healthy lives by engaging with a range of health care practices including healthy diet; being physically active; managing stress; controlling obesity; undertaking regular screening check-ups, etc., The rationale for a healthy lifestyle lies in the epidemiological evidence on the nature of risk factors for most of the chronic non-communicable diseases. The notion of individual responsibility in health is supported by the neo-liberal ideology promoting the idea of a rational individual/consumer asserting choices and taking responsibility for these choices6 Accompanying such large scale changes patterning late modernity is the argument that lifestyle consumption habits have become an important marker of social identity rather than mere work or occupation. This study seeks to fill this gap and analyze the contexts through which such global discourses are embodied and at times reconstructed in different cultural contexts. Following this objective, three sections mark the present
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