Dominant Health Discourses Research Articles

“My job is to keep my body healthy”: biopedagogies, beauty and institutional greed in professional ballet

Context The ballet institution is known for its aesthetic and performative standards. In professional dancers’ everyday lives, self-improvement and body awareness entwine with striving for artistic excellence. In this context, ‘health’ has primarily been explored in relation to eating disorders, pain, and injuries. Aim This paper explores dancers’ health practices, namely how they are shaped by the ballet institution and how they relate to broader health discourses. Methodology A reflexive thematic analysis was conducted upon interviews with nine dancers (each interviewed twice) using a theoretical framework based on the concepts of greedy institutions and biopedagogies. Analyses Two themes were developed: What it takes to be an ‘insider’ of the ballet institution and Learning to develop an acute embodied self-awareness. Dancers described ballet as a ‘lifestyle’ rather than a ‘job’; practices of self-care defined by continuous self and body work were framed as necessary to meet the demands of this lifestyle. Participants ‘played with’ institutional and societal norms, often resisting docile bodies promoted within the ballet institution. Conclusion Dancers’ constructions of health and the art of ballet as not fitting neatly into ‘good’ nor ‘bad’ make room to consider the tensions between adopting and resisting dominant health discourses in this institution.

Understanding fatness: Jamaican women’s constructions of health

ABSTRACTThe prevalence of dominant health discourses has been observed in many Western countries. These discourses tend to associate fatness with ill health, perpetuating stigma and negative attributions about bigger bodies. The authors examine women’s constructions of health in an urban Jamaican context. The findings show that women generally reproduce the dominant (Western) “obesity epidemic” discourse, but also take up a local cultural discourse, which the authors call the slim-thick healthy body discourse. The authors describe the features of this discourse and contrast it with the dominant “obesity epidemic” discourse. They conclude by considering both positive and negative implications of both discourses and suggest possibilities for challenging them.

Dominant Health Discourses in Action: Constructing People with Disabilities as the "Inadmissible Other" in Canadian Immigration

This paper reports on a Critical Discourse Analysis study situated within a postcolonial theoretical framework and informed by Foucauldian analysis and the lens of governmentality. The study examined official Canadian immigration documents and guidelines. Findings suggest that discourses of risk and protection are used to mask dominant health discourses that construct immigration applicants with disabilities as the "inadmissible Other". Implications for social work and other helping professions involved in facilitating immigration and settlement for newcomers with disabilities are discussed, and suggestions for future directions in research are offered.

Resisting "Reason": A Comparative Anthropological Study of Social Differences and Resistance toward Health Promotion and Illness Prevention in Denmark.

Social differences in health and illness are well documented in Denmark. However, little is known about how health practices are manifested in the everyday lives of different social classes. We propose acts of resistance and formation of health subjectivities as helpful concepts to develop our understanding of how dominant health discourses are appropriated by different social classes and transformed into different practices promoting health and preventing illness. Based on fieldwork in two different social classes, we discuss how these practices both overtly and subtly challenge the normative power of the health promotion discourse. These diverse and ambiguous forms of everyday resistance illustrate how and when situated concerns move social actors to subjectively appropriate health promotion messages. Overall, the different forms of resistance elucidate how the standardized awareness and education campaigns may perpetuate the very inequalities they try to diminish.

Exploring online fitness culture and young females

While previous studies have investigated online health communities and health-seeking behaviours, less attention has been directed at the growing impact of the online fitness movement. This paper draws on the concept of biopedagogies to examine the messages transmitted within fitness culture on social networking sites (SNSs), and their role as a channel for health and fitness information. To explore this, a multi-method approach was conducted. The two methods included a netnography (online ethnography) and 22 semi-structured individual interviews with female participants aged 18–24 in Australia. The study suggests that online fitness use is becoming a popular leisure activity and source of health and fitness information. It reveals how SNSs are used as a platform to gather and teach ideas of health and fitness, and the manner in which textual and photographic online communication facilitates the social construction and transmission of this knowledge. Results indicated that although fitness accounts on SNSs offer differing notions to present alternative and competing realities, users predominantly chose to follow the normalised and dominant health discourses. Noteworthy, the onus is firmly placed on the individual within these health and fitness messages to adhere to norms of correct health practices and choices. This has connotations relevant to eHealth literacy.

The power of relationships: exploring how Public Health Nurses support mothers and families during postpartum home visits.

Postpartum home visiting by Public Health Nurses (PHNs) has been used by many health departments across Canada as a way of supporting new mothers and their families. Although positive health outcomes are linked with support from PHNs, little is known about how this occurs during the home visit. The purpose of this research was to explore how home visiting programs for mothers and babies were organized, delivered, and experienced through the everyday practices of PHNs, mothers, and managers in Nova Scotia, Canada. Feminist poststructuralism was used to guide the research and semi-structured face-to-face interviews were conducted with 16 PHNs, 16 mothers, and 4 managers. Participants described how relationships were an essential part of supporting mothers and families. These findings also challenge dominant health discourses and stereotypes that are often associated with mothering and the practice of PHNs with families.

Health discourse, sexual slang and ideological contradictions among Mozambican youth: implications for method

Despite the urgency of improving an understanding of sexual cultures in the face of a globally devastating HIV epidemic, methodological reflection and innovation has been conspicuously absent from qualitative research in recent years. Findings from fieldwork on condom use among young people in Mozambique confirm the need to remain alert to the ideological and linguistic bias of applied methods. Interviewing young people about their sexuality using a conventional health discourse resulted in incorrect or socially acceptable answers rather than accurate information about their sexual behaviour. Young people's resistance to enquiry, the paper argues, is due to ideological contradictions between their sexual culture and slang, on the one hand, and Western health discourses associated with colonial and post-colonial opposition to traditional culture and languages, on the other. Mixing colloquial Portuguese and changana sexual slang is constructed around ideas of safedeza and pleasure, while dominant health discourses address sexuality as both ‘risky’ and ‘dangerous’. In order to gain a deeper understanding of sexual cultures and to make HIV prevention efforts relevant to young people, it is suggested that researchers and policy makers approach respondents with a language that is sensitive to the local ideological and linguistic context.