Week2_2 Health Lifestyle Theory

Question 1

Dominant understanding of disease:
Biomedical Model

Answer 1

Doctrine of specific etiology

• Pasteur’s germ theory (disease caused by germs infecting organs) –
  solely biological understanding of disease

microorganisms
–> air, water/food, insect bites
–> disease

Question 2

The biomedical model: Critiques (3)

Answer 2

*Reductionist
focuses on biological changes, neglects social, psychological, economic and political factors

*Acontextual
body is separated from socioenvironmental context

*Asocial
diseases and their embodiment are socially constructed. Health is not just the absence of disease

Question 3

The biomedical model: Limitations

Answer 3

*Applicability of the biomedical model:
* Limited range of Infectious diseases
* Persistence of chronic illness despite significant investment

*Complex disease causation:
* Why do some people get infected, and others don’t (e.g., flu)?

*Focus on the individual (vs. the social and the structural):
* Patient objectification
* Reductionism, Biological determinism
* Victim blaming

*What role for social responsibility?
leaves very little role

Question 4

Health lifestyles – Sociological perspective

Answer 4

*Analytic concept that distinguishes GROUPS of people

*A set of observable health-related behaviors, values, and
practices adapted by a group of individuals in response to
their social environments

*Informed by Weber on life chances (structure)—empower or
constrain choices

-choices: self-direction
-chances: opportunities encountered due to their social station

Weber: free will vs determinism as central sociological question

Question 5

Health Lifestyle Theory
What is the Question?

Answer 5

Are the decisions people make with respect to diet, exercise, smoking and the like largely a matter of
individual choice or are principally shaped by
structural variables such as social class position
and gender?

Question 6

Health Lifestyle Theory
What is the Argument?

Answer 6

While agency is important, structural conditions can act back
on individuals and configure their lifestyle
patterns in particular ways. Agency allows them
to reject or modify these patterns, but structure limits the options that are available.

Question 7

Healthy Lifestyle Theory - Context

Answer 7

Health in late modernity is an achievement—something
people are responsible for and supposed to work at

• This perspective on health originates from…
  1. Changes in disease patterns (acute to chronic diseases)
  2. Social structure of modern, Western societies (diverse, advanced)
  3. Primacy of social and cultural identities (occupation as identity to
  consumer habits as identity)
• Reject: Approach to research in public health and
  epidemiology that treats health behavior as matters of
  individual choice (Free-will or determinism?)

Question 8

Healthy Lifestyle Theory - Agency vs structure

Answer 8

Health Lifestyles –
Collective patterns of
health-related behavior
based on choices from
options available to
people according to their
life chances or
circumstances.

• Personal routines that
  aggregate up to represent a specific group.