Title
Against Health : How Health Became the New Morality / ed. by Anna Kirkland, Jonathan M. Metzl.
ISBN
9780814759639
Published
New York, NY : : New York University Press, [2010]
Copyright
©2010
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource
Other Standard Identifiers
10.18574/nyu/9780814759639.001.0001 doi
Call Number
RA418 .A53 2010
Dewey Decimal Classification
362.1
Summary
You see someone smoking a cigarette and say,"Smoking is bad for your health," when what you mean is, "You are a bad person because you smoke." You encounter someone whose body size you deem excessive, and say, "Obesity is bad for your health," when what you mean is, "You are lazy, unsightly, or weak of will." You see a woman bottle-feeding an infant and say,"Breastfeeding is better for that child's health," when what you mean is that the woman must be a bad parent. You see the smokers, the overeaters, the bottle-feeders, and affirm your own health in the process. In these and countless other instances, the perception of your own health depends in part on your value judgments about others, and appealing to health allows for a set of moral assumptions to fly stealthily under the radar.Against Health argues that health is a concept, a norm, and a set of bodily practices whose ideological work is often rendered invisible by the assumption that it is a monolithic, universal good. And, that disparities in the incidence and prevalence of disease are closely linked to disparities in income and social support. To be clear, the book's stand against health is not a stand against the authenticity of people's attempts to ward off suffering. Against Health instead claims that individual strivings for health are, in some instances, rendered more difficult by the ways in which health is culturally configured and socially sustained.The book intervenes into current political debates about health in two ways. First, Against Health compellingly unpacks the divergent cultural meanings of health and explores the ideologies involved in its construction. Second, the authors present strategies for moving forward. They ask, what new possibilities and alliances arise? What new forms of activism or coalition can we create? What are our prospects for well-being? In short, what have we got if we ain't got health? Against Health ultimately argues that the conversations doctors, patients, politicians, activists, consumers, and policymakers have about health are enriched by recognizing that, when talking about health, they are not all talking about the same thing. And, that articulating the disparate valences of "health" can lead to deeper, more productive, and indeed more healthy interactions about our bodies.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 18. Sep 2023)
Series
Biopolitics ; ; 18
Available in Other Form
print 9780814795927
Frontmatter
Contents
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction: Why "Against Health"?
Part I : What Is Health, Anyway?
2. What Is Health and How Do You Get It?
3 Risky Bigness: On Obesity, Eating, and the Ambiguity of "Health"
4 Against Global Health? Arbitrating Science, Non-Science, and Nonsense through Health
Part II : Seeing Health through Morality
5 The Social Immorality of Health in the Gene Age: Race, Disability, and Inequality
6. Fat Panic and the New Morality
7 Against Breastfeeding (Sometimes)
Part III : Making Health and Disease
8 Pharmaceutical Propaganda
9 The Strangely Passive-Aggressive History of Passive-Aggressive Personality Disorder
10 Obsession: Against Mental Health
11 Atomic Health, or How The Bomb Altered American Notions of Death
Part IV : Pleasure and Pain after Health
12 How Much Sex Is Healthy? The Pleasures of Asexuality
13 Be Prepared
14 In the Name of Pain
15 Conclusion: What Next?
About the Contributors
Index
