De Jong Michelle, Collins Anthony, Plüg Simóne
School of Public Health, University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa.
Faculty of Arts and Design, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa.
SN Soc Sci. 2021;1(8):215. doi: 10.1007/s43545-021-00225-3. Epub 2021 Sep 1.
Social science research on health in South Africa tends to focus on illness and how to address health problems. Qualitative empirical research focussing on lay understandings and experiences of healthiness, or health discourses, in South Africa is fairly limited. This article addresses this gap by critically exploring how young South African adults used discourses of balance to make sense of what it means to be a healthy person and highlights the implications of these discourses for identity. Foucault's concepts of 'technologies of the self' and 'techniques of discipline' are discussed as a theoretical grounding for this paper. Data were collected from 20 in-depth semi-structured interviews, and analysed using Foucauldian discourse analysis. This paper will specifically explore a key discourse identified through the analysis: 'health as balance' and 2 interrelated sub-discourses which fall within it Through this discourse, healthiness was constructed as requiring a broad focus on improving all aspects of one's life ('health as holistic') and the avoidance of any behaviours or emotions which could be classified as extreme ('health as moderation'). Constant, careful management of the self, or 'calibration', functions to both perpetuate a cycle of 'anxiety and control' and to obscure ways in which health discourses can be harmful or problematic.
南非关于健康的社会科学研究往往侧重于疾病以及如何解决健康问题。聚焦于南非民众对健康的理解和体验，或健康话语的定性实证研究相当有限。本文通过批判性地探究南非年轻成年人如何运用平衡话语来理解成为一个健康的人意味着什么，填补了这一空白，并强调了这些话语对身份认同的影响。本文讨论了福柯的“自我技术”和“规训技术”概念，作为其理论基础。数据收集自20次深入的半结构化访谈，并采用福柯式话语分析进行分析。本文将具体探讨通过分析确定的一个关键话语：“健康即平衡”以及其中包含的两个相互关联的子话语。通过这个话语，健康被建构为需要广泛关注改善生活的各个方面（“健康即整体”），并避免任何可归类为极端的行为或情绪（“健康即适度”）。对自我的持续、细致管理，即“校准”，既起到延续“焦虑与控制”循环的作用，又掩盖了健康话语可能具有的有害性或问题性的方式。
