Taylor & disenchantment

Charles Taylor believed that in pre-modern societies:

People lived in an “enchanted” world… the world of spirits, demons, and moral forces which our ancestors lived in. (Taylor 2007, p. 25)

The new mechanistic science of the seventeenth century wasn’t seen as necessarily threatening to God. It was [threatening] to the enchanted universe and magic.(Taylor 2007, p. 26)

Giddens’ thesis?

Modernity vs traditional

the search for self identity is a modern problem; … in medieval Europe, lineage, gender, social status and other attributes relevant to identity were all relatively fixed. (Giddens 1991, p. 74)

The more post-traditional the setting in which an individual moves, the more lifestyle concerns the very core self-identity, it’s making and remaking. (Giddens 1991, p. 81)

Trajectory of the Self

[Rainwater’s] Self Therapy … is intended as a programme of self-realisation… What to do? How to act? Who to be? (Giddens 1991, p. 70)

[presumes] a ‘dialogue with time’ a process of self questioning about how the individual handles the time of her lifespan…. as allowing for life to be lived, rather than consisting of a finite quantity that is running out… (Giddens 1991, p. 72)

ex. Giddens modernity & self

In a group, document an example of each of Giddens’ ten attributes.

1–5

1. The self is seen as a reflexive project, for which the individual is responsible.
2. The self forms a trajectory of development from the past to the anticipated future.
3. The reflexivity of the self is continuous, as well as all pervasive.
4. It is made clear that self identity, as a coherent phenomenon, presumes a narrative: the narrative of the self is made explicit.
5. Self-actualisation implies the control of time essentially, the establishing of zones of personal time which have only remote connections with external temporal orders.

6–10

6. The reflexivity of the self extends to the body.
7. Self-actualisation is understood in terms of a balance between opportunity and risk.
8. The moral thread of self-actualisation is one of authenticity.
9. The life course is seen as a series of ‘passages’.
10. The line of development of the self is internally referential: the only significant connecting thread is the life trajectory as such. (Giddens 1991, p. 75–79)

Modernity and choice

Modernity confronts the individual with a complex diversity of choices and … at the same time offers little help as to which options should be selected. (Giddens 1991, p. 80)

in traditional cultures, lifestyle is not an applicable term. Options are constrained and handed down rather than adopted (Giddens 1991, p. 81)

Choice and lifestyle

A lifestyle [is an] integrated set of practices which an individual embraces, not only because such practices fulfill utilitarian needs, but because they give material form for a particular narrative of self-identity. (Giddens 1991, p. 81)

All such choices (as well as larger and more consequential ones) are decisions not only about how to act but who to be. (Giddens 1991, p. 81)

Science will not save us

The Enlightenment project of replacing arbitrary tradition and speculative claims to knowledge with the certainty of reason proved to be essentially flawed. The reflexivity of modernity operates, not in a situation of greater and greater certainty, but in one of methodological doubt. (Giddens 1991, p. 83)

Fraught expertise

Experts can always be turned to, but experts themselves frequently disagree over both theories and practical diagnoses. (Giddens 1991, p. 84)

Kellog

As health is a virtue, illness is the inevitable outcome of vice. (Appleyard 1994)

Individual responsibility

Like medicine, healthism situates the problem of health and disease at the level of the individual. Solutions are formulated at that level as well. To the extent that healthism shapes popular beliefs, we will continue to have a non-political, and therefore, ultimately ineffective conception and strategy of health promotion. Further, by elevating health to a super value, a metaphor for all that is good in life, healthism reinforces the privatization of the struggle for generalized well-being. (Crawford 1980, p. 365)

e.g., Insurance

Will insurance coverage be denied to those whose lifestyles are deemed to be too willfully unhealthy? (Appleyard 1994)

What do you think?

Healthism

We are exhorted to pursue an impossible and illiberal cult of perfection. (Appleyard 1994)

“As healthism is driven by power, rather than by concern for the welfare of fellow men, it is devoid of any moral principles.” (Petr Skrabanek in Appleyard 1994)

Healthism’s origins

Sanitation and vaccines led to longer lives.

this new longevity [led to] a massive increase in illnesses of old age - dementia, cancer, heart disease - and [is] used to justify the impositions of the healthists.

Anything can be medicalised and … become an excuse for group pressure on the individual… in the name of communal virtue, money or the supposed impact on others. (Appleyard 1994)

Kellogg redux

there will always be Kelloggs … keen to deprive others of their pleasures. (Appleyard 1994)

Solutionism

Recasting all complex social situations either as neat problems with definite, computable solutions or as transparent and self-evident processes that can be easily optimized–if only the right algorithms are in place!–this quest is likely to have unexpected consequences that could eventually cause more damage than the problems they seek to address. I call the ideology that legitimizes and sanctions such aspirations “solutionism.” (Morozov 2014, “To save everything, click here”, pp. 5-6)

Stop eating food

Do we need “food”?

I hypothesized that the body doesn’t need food itself, merely the chemicals and elements it contains. … I just want to be in good health and spend as little time and money on food as possible. (Rhinehart 2013)

“Changed my life”

I haven’t eaten a bite of food in 30 days, and it’s changed my life. (Rhinehart 2013)

How?

Wrap up

Write down what you think

• your responsibility for your own health is?
• your responsibility for healthcare of others?

Would you have preferred “traditional” times?

1. What was Giddens thesis?
2. What is healthism?
3. What responsibility do you have for your and others’ health?