BSS- Lifestyle and health Flashcards
what is lifestyle in the medical context ?
- patterns of risky behaviour/ the behavioural aspects of health (e.g diet, smoking, drinking, sexual behavioural patterns)
- In this context behaviours are primarily portrayed as voluntarily chosen and are sometimes influenced by economic and cultural factors
What is the lifestyle approach to health?
- Focus on person’s behaviours, i.e., individual responsibility, implying control and power to change, at a time when they are becoming less capable of controlling their environment.
- making choices and adopting habits that promote overall physical and mental wellbeing.
What is the structural critique of the lifestyle approach to health?
- Fail to take into account the material disadvantages of people’s lives e.g. (social inequality, poverty, bad housing) and cultural contexts.
- What lifestyles are available to you is determined by where you live, e.g. urban/rural area (think take-away coffee or take-away foods), the nature of the neighbourhood (access to fresh veg markets or only corner shops).
- Beliefs about health are rooted in wider socio-economic and cultural contexts. Lifestyles are inseparable from the socio-economic structures in which individuals live out their lives.
Describe the 4 levels in which individuals behaviour is affected by.
1- Microsystem: face-to-face interactions, immediate family;
2- Mesosystem: extended family, school, peer groups, places of worship;
3- Exosystem: forces within larger social system – neighbourhood and city services
4- Macrosystem: cultural beliefs and values - Marlboro man creating smoking as a masculine activity, the importance of certain foods in establishing cultural identities - fish and chips.
What is the medical sociologists argument which is a structural critique which explains why individuals ability to control risk of disease is limited.
1- Although behavioural habits are related to health, they have less impact than the circumstances in which they are embedded
2- Persons’ actions are grounded in and constrained by social circumstances. ‘Health choices are shaped by material as well as mental structures.
> The barriers to change are represented by the limits of time, energy and income available.
What is Max Webber’s theory on the sociology of lifestyle?
- Lifestyles are linked to status groups
> Specific style of life is expected from those who belong to a circle.
> Collective phenomena which show the prestige that individuals believe they enjoy or to which they aspire. (sub-culture level)
> Lifestyles represent patterns of consumption, not production.
> Formed by the interplay between choices that people make and chances of having the options at their disposal
1- According to Pierre Bourdieu lifestyle choices are an important indicator of what ?
2- What are the 4 type of capital which characterise class positions ?
1- Indicator of class
2-
- Economic capital - all sources of income
- Social capital - actual or potential social resources deriving from group membership.
- Symbolic capital - resources available on the basis of prestige, honour and recognition.
- Cultural capital - distinctive forms of knowledge which are culturally valued and gained through education and socialisation.
> Individuals distinguish themselves from others, not (only) according to economic factors, but on the basis of cultural capital.
How do conceptualisations about health and illness in contemporary western societies reflect values of capitalism and individualism ?
- Filled with notions of self discipline, self-denial, self control and will power
What does neoliberalism conceptualise individuals as?
- Rational agents who should take responsibility to protect themselves from risks rather than rely on the state to protect them.
What gives rise to the commercialisation of health?
- Rise in consumer culture
- People are constructed as health consumers who consume healthy lifestyles e.g. fancy yoga sets
What is the politics of lifestyle?
- e.g. Obesity and tobacco use evolved from a private matter to a political issue when they became threats to the economy and the power of the state
1- What is the central paradox of health ?
2- Define healthism. What is it linked to?
1- We now live longer and healthier lives than ever before, yet as a society we are preoccupied with health
2- Promotion of health to a super- value
Focus = management of health rather than illness itself
> Linked to the emergence of the ‘worried well’ – healthy individuals who are preoccupied with their health
Describe the concept of a risk society.
- We live in a more risk-conscious society
> Monitoring and avoiding risk becomes a part of our day- to-day lives - everything is evaluated according to their potential risks ignoring other aspects (pleasure, taste, costs).
What is moralisation? Give an example.
- Acquisition of moral qualities by objects and activities that were previously morally neutral.
> Framing lifestyle actions as moral or immoral
e.g. coffee - previously neutral; now needs to be fair trade from an independent coffee house paying fair wages to people producing and serving coffee
What is Victim blaming?
- Claiming ill health is the result of personal failure. > Dismissing the importance of social and environmental factors and leads to the blaming of individuals who do not adhere to healthy lifestyle suggestions.
