Sociology: Theorising Risky Health Behaviour

Question 1

What is the definition of risk through a social scientists perspective?

Answer 1

• For social scientists, ‘risk’ is defined as the probability fo a bad outcome occurring in relation to an event or behaviour
• ‘Risk’ is understood to be a social construct (everyday knowledge is creatively produced by individuals and is directed towards practical problems), it doesn’t exist in an objective space an an unchangeable feature of the physical world
• Hence, the existence of different perceptions of what constitutes a health risk is held by the public and health professionals

Question 2

How is a ‘health risk’ constructed?

Answer 2

Health risk is constructed through the process of aggregating statistical probabilities of a particular set of actions, linked to disease outcomes across whole populations

Question 3

What is the goal of identifying ‘health risks’?

Answer 3

The goal of this epidemiological approach is to identify ‘at risk’ groups i.e smokers, obese, people who fit into a group that can become the target of health promotion intervention

• Epidemiology transforms statistical relationships existing between a range of population health variable, nito casual factors for individual and social group health risk.
  
  • These statistically-generated risk factors are constructed as realities in their own right
  • Most epidemiologist would acknowledge that health risk isn’t primary volitional (use of person’s will) in character
  • This kind of imagination they bring to this activity therefore depends on their objectives, values, training, and experience

Question 4

Describe the micro socio-cultural context in which lay people try and make sense of ‘expert’ risk assessments: - it’s micro because it looks at small relationships between people and risk

Answer 4

Social construction of risky behaviour:

• Emphasises the cultural relativity of the notion of risk
• Individual and social group understanding of health risk are seen to a culturally variable product, deriving from a shared social value system
• A shared culture represents the attempt to make social relations meaningful and predictable for individuals
• As such it acts as a bulwark against the inevitable uncertainties and anxieties of social life
• Social research has shown that lay people tend to transform numbers and degrees into simple all-or-nothing messages
  
  • ‘Measurements and results expressed as numbers seem to be strong metaphors which people contextualize and interpret in different ways according to their personal experience and spheres of knowledge’ (Adelswärd & Sachs 1996).
• There are significant challenges in constructing preventative health strategies that are able to translate the numbers & measurements derived from medico-epidemiological research, into culturally meaningful knowledge

Question 5

Describe the wider (macro) social and environmental context in which the hazards and insecurities of modern industrialised societies occur

(Describe the risky society thesis)

Answer 5

• Social research has found that what may be regarded as ‘risky’ (health) behaviour often operates at a latent, or extra-rational level of meaning for many individuals
• A distinction can be drawn between a social world of routine activities associated with unconsidered risk behaviours, and a situation in which novel or out of the usual events occur
• Novel events require an individual to calculate and balance alternative courses of action, routine activities generally do not

‘Risk society’ thesis:

• We live in a period of time in which the hazardous environmental costs of industrialisation and globalisation now far outweigh their benefits
• This is the perspective that technical and scientific ‘progress’ has brought us to the brink of environmental catastrophe
• This position references unintended consequences of nuclear-power, impact of internal combustion engine and other sources of unsustainable carbon emissions, global consumption of plastics, etc.
• These developments have resulted in the emergence of the ‘risk society’
• This is the emergent cultural and social situation in which people find themselves now, wherein they’re forced to think through an uncertain future for themselves and their families and communities, over which they have little control.
• ‘Risk’ therefore becomes how the culture of a society engages with environmental risk to the planet and to humanity rather than an issue of people acting rationally or not
• In this situation, ‘risk behaviour’ is not a ‘category of understanding’ (rational knowledge of probabilities of the consequences of actions), but rather a ‘category of fear’ (a social ‘fact’ from which there is no easy exit)
• What has emerged as a consequence is an over-identification o the objects of such risk. These are now seen to exist in all spheres of modern society, but can also be highly selective.
• It’s also within this cultural fear of uncertainity that we see proliferation of risk assessment and management strategies
• The notion of ‘risk society’ has clear implications for the willingness of indiviuals to respond to interventions to limit health risk behaviours to adopt ‘healthy lifestyles’
• E.g. the perspective that why change your individual behaviour when much greater levels of risk are embedded into the fabric of modern societies?