RHP&EO is the electronic journal of the International Union for Health Promotion and Education

Health Promotion, Neo-Liberalism And Multidisciplinarity A Reorganization Of The Condition Of Power And Knowledge

Petersson, K. Ph.D

Vanersborg University College of Health and Caring Sciences, Vanersborg. Sweden

In recent decades, far-reaching developments and changes in health work and the interpretation of health have taken place. In the reoriented image of health, it is proposed that life quality be promoted in a new perspective. Multi-disciplinary developments have contributed to this shift in the concept of health from the medical picture of health as the absence of disease to a definition which coincides with Man's quality of life in general. It is not sufficient to turn to epistemological sources in order to increase our understanding of what this shift implies. The growth of the new health promotion concept is no doubt associated with today's neo-liberal political rationality which is now concretised in terms of decentralization, self-care and self-management. In practice as well as in the formation of knowledge in social science, the concept of health and health promotion coincides with an overall political trend which supports a new concern for the individual and his active management and control of his own welfare. This self-care is underlined by the fact that no serious attempts are made to define health in the health discourse, e.g. any attempt to define health on the basis of definitions of health given beforehand are rejected. Accordingly, health no longer has any natural points of reference and the definition of health, and thus that of ill-health, coincides with the actions of the individual, that is, with the way in which he is able culturally and socially to understand and create himself. The starting-point for professional practice and the formation of knowledge is thus not to achieve health or do away with ill-health but, rather, to see to it that health is something which is always promoted and mobilised through scientific and professional attention focusing on our life-styles, behaviours and attitudes. With this, the individual becomes more than ever an object made visible which in itself is paradoxical considering the fact that at the same time we are encouraged to be autonomous, independent and make our own choices as regards ordering our lives. In other words, health promotion is intimately connected with the exercise of power.

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