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Ideology and resistance in young people's experiences of health under the ‘imperative of enjoyment’
Author(s) -
Vitus Kathrine
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
sociology of health and illness
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.146
H-Index - 97
eISSN - 1467-9566
pISSN - 0141-9889
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9566.12611
Subject(s) - pleasure , ideology , public health , resistance (ecology) , sociology , social psychology , appeal , qualitative research , health promotion , consumption (sociology) , psychology , medicine , political science , politics , social science , law , nursing , ecology , neuroscience , biology
This article explores upper secondary school students’ understandings and experiences of health in Denmark, where public health promotions appeal to pleasure. Health promotion thereby taps into capitalist society's ‘imperative of enjoyment’, which reproduces ideological fantasies about the fulfilment of desires through the consumption of health. Based on qualitative empirical material produced through participatory and visual methods during fieldwork conducted in 2012, the analysis shows that relations between healthiness and pleasure are conflated and paradoxical: the students try to fit into society not only by being healthy, but also by enjoying healthiness; but if they fail pleasure, they fail healthiness and experience a loss of individual social value. Although the ‘enjoyment society’ has the potential to produce individualisation and marginalisation, the students in this study actively attempt to subvert its double bind by insisting that collective experiences with peers constitutes the foundation of enjoyable healthiness. Nevertheless, public health promotions that reproduce enjoyment as an imperative, even in the pursuit of health, risk reinforcing young people's resistance towards health.