Abstract
ABSTRACT Purpose: Healthiness is constructed, in Western culture, as a moral ideal or supervalue. This paper will interrogate the assumption that health and the pursuit of healthiness is always and unquestionably positive, by exploring how discourses of health and freedom interact to reinforce the current inequalities and detract from social transformation. Method: Twenty young South African adults were interviewed about their understandings and experiences of health. These discussions were analysed using Foucauldian discourse analysis. Results: Participants constructed healthiness as facilitating the experience of freedom, while at the same time being dependent on a personal orientation towards freedom (as opposed to merely submitting to dominant health authorities). Freedom discourses also played a role in connecting health to neoliberal discourses idealizing economic productivity and hard work. Participants were able to construct a self that is active, productive, valuable, hopeful, and self-assured when talking about health using discourses of freedom. However, these discourses also functioned to moralise and idealise healthiness, which contributed to blaming poor health on its sufferers. Conclusion: Health/freedom discourses can further reinforce the neoliberal value of individual responsibility by constructing self-improvement and self-work as the solution to ill-health, thereby contributing to victim-blaming and weakening support for public health interventions.
Highlights
Foucault (2008) emphasizes the importance of critiquing “institutions that appear both neutral and independent” (p. 41)
A self that is active, productive, valuable, hopeful and whole is constructed through the use of this discourse, and while individuals are enabled to view themselves as good people it brings with it similar victim-blaming noted in other discourses of health: if an individual is suffering from some sort of health problem, all they need to do is choose to overcome the limits of their body by working on it and transforming it
This paper explores how popular ideas of health are constructed using discourses of freedom, highlighting the potential implications these constructions have for both individuals’ personal experiences of health, and for broader social structures
Summary
Foucault (2008) emphasizes the importance of critiquing “institutions that appear both neutral and independent” (p. 41). This paper will argue against the assumption that the pursuit of healthiness is always and unquestionably positive by examining the way discourses constructing healthiness, in this specific case discourses of freedom, can function to reinforce current social inequalities and preclude positive social transformation These discourses will be situated within the context of neoliberal capitalism (which idealizes individual responsibility and productivity) and healthism (which moralizes healthiness). This research is located within ongoing efforts to reduce inequality and promote well-being in South Africa, with respect to health, it diverges from both the state project of implementing public medical services, and the tacit project of globalised lifestyle media and consumer culture linking health to the marketing of personal lifestyle choices This latter popular cultural form is the object of investigation in this study. Our assumption is that it is only by formally identifying this network of ideas and critically examining how it functions, both in constructing individual identities and legitimating social policies, that we can identify some of the negative consequences of this specific construction of “healthiness”
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