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This article presents an examination of the ways in which responsibility for health is constructed in popular English-Canadian women's magazines. Women's magazines are a unique media form, acting as guidebooks for women on matters relating to feminine gender roles and are important to examine as part of the corpus of societal discourses which frame our understandings of what it means to be healthy and how good health is achieved. Using discourse analysis several techniques were found which reinforce women's individual responsibility to create and maintain good health for themselves and their families. The magazines instruct women/readers directly about their health-related responsibilities and outline the negative consequences of inaction or incorrect action. The magazines also use the traditional discursive technique of women's personal accounts as both cautionary tales and inspirational stories to encourage readers to actively pursue healthy behaviours. Reflecting and reinforcing the discourse of healthism, women's magazines consistently present health as an important individual responsibility and a moral imperative which creates an entrepreneurial subject position for women. The article concludes by discussing the implications for women's magazine audiences within the ongoing feminist debate about this cultural industry.
This article presents an examination of the ways in which responsibility for health is constructed in popular English-Canadian women's magazines. Women's magazines are a unique media form, acting as guidebooks for women on matters relating to feminine gender roles and are important to examine as part of the corpus of societal discourses which frame our understandings of what it means to be healthy and how good health is achieved. Using discourse analysis several techniques were found which reinforce women's individual responsibility to create and maintain good health for themselves and their families. The magazines instruct women/readers directly about their health-related responsibilities and outline the negative consequences of inaction or incorrect action. The magazines also use the traditional discursive technique of women's personal accounts as both cautionary tales and inspirational stories to encourage readers to actively pursue healthy behaviours. Reflecting and reinforcing the discourse of healthism, women's magazines consistently present health as an important individual responsibility and a moral imperative which creates an entrepreneurial subject position for women. The article concludes by discussing the implications for women's magazine audiences within the ongoing feminist debate about this cultural industry.
The article inquires into the uneasiness of sociological systems theory about culture. Culture alternatively is called the solution to the problem of double contingency (Parsons) and removed from this solution (Luhmann). It is shown that meaning is the more basic term whose description reveals a form rule of social systems which is only patterned, yet not understood by culture. Culture is a memory and control device of society. It may be conceived of as providing the distinction of correct versus incorrect behaviour. But who decides on the correctness or incorrectness of this distinction? Sociological thinking takes off where the cultural and the social are distinguished.
The dying think that they will live / The healthy think they are dying -Glenn Colquhoun, Playing God A physician/poet wrote the words in the epigraph above. Showing through is his frustration that the healthy seem unable to focus on living, on the going-forth that is the gift of the healthy. The dying, on the other hand, look back to that goingforth and want to reclaim it within the narrative of their lives. Fictional accounts and personal narratives that relate to encounters with the world of medicine concern primarily beginnings or endings -miraculous births or the processes of preparing to die. This is not true, however, of poetry and children's literature. Both these genres tend to prefer the middle parts -what happens as life moves between birth and death. These two genres, filled with metaphors, frequently recount touching moments of encounter with the humanity of medicine. These metaphors, often in the form of epigrams or proverbs, reflect the middle, the long passage of life carried on beyond medical reports, diagnoses, and emergencies.Is there preparation for the middle narratives within the medical professions? Nurses and other medical personnel receive extensive training in managing end-of-life narratives. Aside from certain diseases or chronic conditions, such as diabetes, medical personnel spend relatively little time narrating with individuals what it will be like to live with specific diagnoses. When such diagnoses pertain to children, and parents know that the condition named and ascribed will not be fatal for the child, the middle looms long and arduous. When an apparently healthy three-or four-year-old is placed on the autism spectrum, parents and grand parents often need to assume responsibility for a very long
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