This paper reports results from a qualitative study on social representations of health and illness among the Chinese community in England. It is assumed that representations of health and illness are grounded in cultural frameworks and are constructed through communication, social interaction and the practices of daily life. Our ®ndings show that in spite of dierences related to age and degrees of acculturation, Chinese people in England share a common representational system with respect to health and illness. This system is based on the traditional notions of``balance'' and``harmony'' between the interdependent forces of Yin and Yang. Health results from balance, whereas illness is brought about by disequilibrium. It is through these traditional Chinese concepts that Western biomedical knowledge is incorporated, producing a mixed representational ®eld where Chinese and Western knowledge co-exist. This representational ®eld is transmitted through the most fundamental dimensions of culture: food, language and kinship relations. We conclude by showing that social representations of health and illness are inseparable from the struggles over identity experienced by the Chinese people in England.Contract/grant sponsor: Health Education Authority. are grounded in cultural frameworks helps to understand how people use, make sense of, and comply with health care. Besides, the co-existence of dierent cultural backgrounds, dierent ways of life and dierent traditions within single contexts has been acutely intensi®ed by the transformations brought about by conditions of late modernity. People, perhaps more than ever before, must face the displacement of taken-for-granted beliefs and open up to other ways of life.These issues place new demands on health intervention related to ethnic groups. Sensitivity to such a context is one of the great challenges confronting health education programmes. Since the Thirtieth World Health Assembly in 1977, the World Health Organization has ocially recognized the importance of integrating traditional medicines into health care systems. This policy change was based on the understanding that the traditional medical knowledge which permeates lay thinking can work as an added resource for health care delivery (World Health Organization, 1978). Culture and traditional knowledge shape how people think, feel, perceive and socially represent questions of health and illness. This is not a trivial issue, considering that it is in the lay, popular, non-professional sector of society that the vast majority of healthrelated decisions are made. It is estimated that between 70% and 90% of all healthrelated decisions are made outside the formal health sector, mainly in the family, but also around social networks and community activities. This is the case in both Western and non-Western societies (Kleinman, 1986). In the course of everyday life, social actors recognize, de®ne, label and explain ill-health. On this basis, health care activities are initiated. These include all the therapeutic options that ...
Health and identity : the case of the Chinese community in EnglandOriginally published in Social science information, 37 (4
This paper reports results from a qualitative study on social representations of health and illness among the Chinese community in England. It is assumed that representations of health and illness are grounded in cultural frameworks and are constructed through communication, social interaction and the practices of daily life. Our ®ndings show that in spite of dierences related to age and degrees of acculturation, Chinese people in England share a common representational system with respect to health and illness. This system is based on the traditional notions of``balance'' and``harmony'' between the interdependent forces of Yin and Yang. Health results from balance, whereas illness is brought about by disequilibrium. It is through these traditional Chinese concepts that Western biomedical knowledge is incorporated, producing a mixed representational ®eld where Chinese and Western knowledge co-exist. This representational ®eld is transmitted through the most fundamental dimensions of culture: food, language and kinship relations. We conclude by showing that social representations of health and illness are inseparable from the struggles over identity experienced by the Chinese people in England.Contract/grant sponsor: Health Education Authority. are grounded in cultural frameworks helps to understand how people use, make sense of, and comply with health care. Besides, the co-existence of dierent cultural backgrounds, dierent ways of life and dierent traditions within single contexts has been acutely intensi®ed by the transformations brought about by conditions of late modernity. People, perhaps more than ever before, must face the displacement of taken-for-granted beliefs and open up to other ways of life.These issues place new demands on health intervention related to ethnic groups. Sensitivity to such a context is one of the great challenges confronting health education programmes. Since the Thirtieth World Health Assembly in 1977, the World Health Organization has ocially recognized the importance of integrating traditional medicines into health care systems. This policy change was based on the understanding that the traditional medical knowledge which permeates lay thinking can work as an added resource for health care delivery (World Health Organization, 1978). Culture and traditional knowledge shape how people think, feel, perceive and socially represent questions of health and illness. This is not a trivial issue, considering that it is in the lay, popular, non-professional sector of society that the vast majority of healthrelated decisions are made. It is estimated that between 70% and 90% of all healthrelated decisions are made outside the formal health sector, mainly in the family, but also around social networks and community activities. This is the case in both Western and non-Western societies (Kleinman, 1986). In the course of everyday life, social actors recognize, de®ne, label and explain ill-health. On this basis, health care activities are initiated. These include all the therapeutic options that ...
Social representations of the individual are examined in three post‐Communist Central European nations, i.e. the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, and in three West European nations, i.e. Scotland, England and France. All six nations share a common European history since the Renaissance and Humanism, based on such values as freedom, agency, individual rights and individual responsibility. Many of these values were rejected by the Communist regimes in which people lived for 40 years. Extreme forms of individualism developed in certain West European nations during the same period. In view of these historical events we have asked the following questions: Do people in the post‐Communist countries of Central Europe, after 40 years of totalitarian collectivism, still adhere to the values of the common European heritage? What is the meaning of ‘the individual’ today, in Western democracies and in Central European post‐Communist nations? Which issues are important for the well‐being of the individual and how do they relate to the political and economic circumstances of those individuals? The results show that the values of the common European heritage in Central Europe have not been destroyed and that factors relating to the well‐being of the individual differ between the two parts of Europe. These data are discussed in terms of the political and economic situations in Central and Western Europe, the relationship between language and social representations and the structure of social representations. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Identifying, locating and interpreting both what is present and what is not present in theory and data lies at the core of scientific practice. Most experienced researchers know that social reality and psychological phenomena cannot always be apprehended directly, and that the forces that shape them must often be inferred rather than positively demonstrated. Yet, the important analytical problems raised by “absence” have rarely occupied the centre stage in professional journals. The aim of this paper is to sensitise researchers to the problem of absence. It considers the various guises in which absences may appear, their repercussions in the research process, and the solutions that researchers have used to render absences visible. The paper focuses on the issue of absence as it appears in theory and research on social representations. A typology of absence, structured in terms of the research process, is proposed. The typology is intended purely as a heuristic tool. It identifies and discusses forms of theoretical, methodological, empirical and analytical/interpretive absences. This typology is used to explore forms of absence and their interrelationships throughout the research process in three studies on social representations. The discussion as a whole contributes to reaffirming the radical character of the theory of social representations by stressing how the latter locates the space of explanation at the interface between individual and collective representations, between social and cognitive processes, between intentional and non‐conscious dynamics, and between material and symbolic realities.
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