Health or healthy: Why people are not sick in a Southern Ontarian town

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore ‘being healthy’ and what it means to people living in a small Ontarian town. It begins by setting out different definitions of health, concluding that ‘being healthy’ may help in understanding how we see ourselves and others in the world. After briefly discussing the site and method of investigation, the paper runs to drawing the distinction between health and ‘being healthy’ empirically. It goes on to examine what respondents see as shaping healthiness, contrasting this with current determinants of health views. There follows discussion on how ‘being healthy’ is negotiated for the self and how it is viewed in others. ‘Being healthy’ is seen as a moral code that is vital for ‘normal’ societal membership. Individuals are seen as negotiating, through use of the ‘sick role’, the cause of their health status in order to maintain healthiness and their place-in-the-world. If cause is linked to individual behaviour, then the individual is seen as being at fault for his/her illness, is unhealthy and therefore deviant. The paper concludes by revising the conceptualization of health.