POSTPONED Ethox Seminar - The Age of Health

This seminar has been cancelled and will be rescheduled at a later date

Abstract

In this talk I explore the hypothesis that we are entering, or have entered, an “age of health”. I begin by identifying some suggestive pieces of evidence: the handing-over of social issues to the medical profession (e.g. concerning end of life); the growth of scope of “health” (e.g. to include mental health and planetary health); the increasing power of public health (e.g. lockdowns; health-related taxes); and the growth of health-related academic work, such as this talk. I then try to formulate the hypothesis more precisely. I develop the idea that this is not merely a sociological change, but a conceptual one: health has come to operate as a master-value, incorporating matters that used to be treated as belonging to separate social, legal, political, personal, ethical, or spiritual domains. I contrast this idea with existing work on related themes, such as medicalisation and biopolitics. I go on to consider what the implications are if the hypothesis is true. If we live in an age of health, what does that mean for science, politics, and medicine? Finally, I consider what evidence might tell for or against the hypothesis, or whether it might lead us to a better one.