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The symbolic power of healthy lifestyles

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DOI: 10.5172/hesr.451.17.1.18

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Peter Korp
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 Copyright © eContent Management Pty Ltd. Health Sociology Review (2008) 17: 18–26

The symbolic power of ‘healthy

lifestyles’
Within the health promotion context, ‘lifestyle’ is a contested concept. On the
ABSTRACT
one hand, it is an incontestable health determinant, and as such forms the primary
focus of traditional health education; whilst, on the other, the customary usage of
lifestyle within health education points to a narrow and superficial understanding
KEY WORDS of the nature of health and the priorities of health promotion. To develop a more
lifestyle, habitus, comprehensive analysis of the structural aspects of lifestyles, recourse needs to be
field, symbolic made to the work of sociological theories. A number of authors have turned to
power, sociology Pierre Bourdieu and his concept of ‘habitus’. This article draws on a hitherto
neglected aspect of Pierre Bourdieu’s analysis of lifestyles, by elaborating on the
implications of his concept of ‘field’, and the relational analysis implicit in this
concept, as a means of gaining an understanding of ‘healthy lifestyles’.
Received 17 November 2006 Accepted 29 January 2008

on the individual’s responsibility for differing

Peter Korp courses of health-related action. Seldom is any
Department of Nursing, Health and Culture reference made to the role of socioeconomic
University West factors and socio-political contexts in determining
Trollhattan, Sweden
and
health-related lifestyles in society (Cockerham
The School of Sport Science 2005). In the context of health, lifestyle is thus
University of Gothenburg predominantly understood as an individual rather
Gothenburg, Sweden than structural variable.
In recent years, however, attempts have been
Introduction made to elaborate a theoretically informed
understanding of ‘lifestyle’ within health promotion

L
ifestyle is a concept often used in research
and medical sociology (e.g. Williams 1995; Abel
and debate on health and health-related
et al 2000; Cockerham 2005). The aim of this
behaviours. It is also commonly used in
work has been to break with the exclusive focus
the social and behavioural sciences, and in the
on individual determinants and responsibilities for
language of marketing (Clarke 2003:129). In
health-related behaviours currently dominant in
addition, lifestyle is also a common expression
health promotion and medical sociology, and
in everyday parlance. According to Michael Sobel
outline ‘a theoretical frame of reference for health
(1981:1), lifestyle is ‘… currently one of the most
lifestyle research’ (Abel 1991:899). In order to
abused words of the English language’. As Sobel
develop a more comprehensive analysis of the
suggests, the concept of lifestyle is, despite its
structural aspects of lifestyle, a number of authors
popularity, rarely defined, much less frequently
have turned to Pierre Bourdieu and his concept
elaborated theoretically. As a consequence, it
of ‘habitus’ (e.g. Abel et al 2000; Cockerham
suffers from an indeterminate and vague usage.
2005). According to Bourdieu, habitus is:
Though hardly ever stated explicitly, the general
usage of ‘lifestyle’ in the field of health promotion … necessity internalised and converted into a
refers to individual behaviours and the ‘way of disposition that generates meaningful
living’ people adopt. There is also a strong focus practices and meaning-giving perceptions; it

18 HEALTH SOCIOLOGY REVIEW Volume 17, Issue 1, June 2008


is a general, transposable disposition which
carries out a systematic, universal application
– beyond the limits of what has been directly
learnt – of the necessity inherent in the
learning conditions (1984:170).
Habitus is, thus, a matter of socialisation and
the adaptation of the individual’s ambitions and
actions to the social circumstances in which they
live. But habitus is also a matter of the way in
which people react to, and actively handle, their
social circumstances.
In this context, therefore, the concept of
habitus serves to ‘… bring considerations of both
agency and structure into a theory of health
lifestyles’ (Cockerham 2005). According to
Cockerham (2005:61), habitus is synonymous
with ‘dispositions to act’ and brings together
individual understanding and choice (‘life choices’)
with the structural constraints or influences (‘life
chances’) of an individual’s actions. Thus habitus
expresses the idea that people make choices, but
their choices are always constrained and
influenced by the resources and social identity of
the actor. In the same vein as Giddens’ (1984)
‘structuration theory’, habitus is an attempt to
grasp this dual nature of social action in both its
subjective and objective aspects.
The ‘individualist paradigm’ in health lifestyle
theory is, thus, challenged by a sociologically
informed perspective that stresses the importance
of life chances and socioeconomic resources in
shaping health-related behaviours (Cockerham
2005). While recognising the importance of the
work of Cockerham and others, its application of
‘habitus’ lacks part of the relational analysis which
is a central concern in the work of Bourdieu. This
form of analysis focuses on the multidimensional,
competitive and power-laden relationships that
exist between different actors and the positions
they hold in various social hierarchies.
A ‘relational analysis’ also implies a primary
focus on ‘objective, historical relations’ (Bourdieu
and Wacquant 1992:16) between social positions,
on the one hand, and the relations between the
‘… mental and corporal schemata of perception,
appreciation, and action’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant
1992:16) of individual actors, on the other. This
puts the interplay between the individual’s objective
Volume 17, Issue 1, June 2008
The symbolic power of ‘healthy lifestyles’
social conditions and their subjective experiences,
feelings and behaviours in the centre of the
analysis. But this interplay between the objective
and subjective dimension is always mediated by
competitive social relations. Thus, it is not the
conditions of existence per se that produce certain
ideas, values and behavioural patterns among
individuals and groups, but the way the conditions,
and the resources that come with them, are valued
in society in relation to other positions and other
resources. The way individuals think and act is,
thus, always a mirror of their social position in a
stratified society. The mirroring is, in turn however,
always mediated by the way the individual actor
classifies their own and others’ social position, and
the way they appreciate their own social position.
The objective relations between social
positions constitute what Bourdieu (e.g.
1991:229) calls ‘fields’. A field is a set of relations
between positions where different actors (or
agents in Bourdieu’s terms) compete for scarce
rewards. It follows that the ‘currency’ of any given
field is power, conceptualised by Bourdieu as
different forms of ‘capital’. The ‘mental and
corporal schemata of perception, appreciation,
and action’ of different individuals are, according
to Bourdieu, in turn, a product or their objective
position in social space and therefore display their
accumulated power resources (amount and forms
of capital). How the individual thinks, feels, and
acts is, according to such an analysis, a matter of
their social position, but also of their
determination to retain or improve that position.
This is why Bourdieu is primarily interested in
lifestyles as a means of distinction and power
display. Lifestyles are, thus, symbolic gestures,
and power relations are an integral part of the
social valuation of different lifestyles. From such
a perspective, a lifestyle symbolises the resources
connected to the social position of the person
practising the lifestyle, but also the relative power
of that social position. Lifestyles, therefore, both
symbolise resources such as money, time, specific
knowledge and skills, and the social positions that
tend to be most affluent with the resources a
specific lifestyle demands. This analysis applies
for society at large, but also for any given social
space within society.
HEALTH SOCIOLOGY REVIEW 19
Peter Korp
In the debate about health lifestyles, the
concept of habitus is often used without reference
to the concept of field, and thus overlooks the
important element of power. As a consequence,
an explicit discussion of the power relations
inherent in the notion of healthy lifestyles is
omitted from academic debate. A discussion of
power is a necessary further development of the
analysis of healthy lifestyles, not the least in
relation to the discourse of health promotion with
its focus on the capacity to choose health
enhancing behaviours. The ‘healthy lifestyle’, as
with any other lifestyle, symbolises resources
connected to specific social conditions. The
notion of the ‘healthy lifestyle’ often presupposes
time and a surplus of energy and strength. You
need time to go to the gym or to take a long
walk, and you need enough energy and strength
to be able to get to the gym or take the long
walk after a full days’ work. In the health
promotion discourse, these pre-conditions for the
‘healthy lifestyle’ are often forgotten and replaced
with references to individual determination and
motivation. Hence they reduce issues of resources
and power to individual capacities.
In the health promotion discourse, a ‘healthy
lifestyle’ is not just a matter of avoiding health-
damaging behaviours, but also the search for
health promoting thoughts, feelings and actions.
The shift from that which you should not do, to
that which you should, implies a reference to a
representation of the ‘should do’ in terms of a
certain symbolic style, i.e. a representation of a
specific set of attitudes and behaviours. It could
therefore be argued that the ‘healthy lifestyle’
implies a reference to a notion of ‘the good life’;
which is fundamentally normative (Seedhouse
1997). The next section of this paper draws on
a hitherto neglected aspect of Pierre Bourdieu’s
analysis; his concept of ‘symbolic power’. This
produces a more thorough understanding of the
social preconditions of ‘healthy lifestyles’.
Bourdieu on lifestyle
In Bourdieu’s analysis of lifestyles, social structures
and the processes of social reproduction take
centre stage. Bourdieu focusses on the processes
which structure the individual’s habitual strategies
20 HEALTH SOCIOLOGY REVIEW
in the practice of everyday life. This involves the
examination of the ways in which the ‘objective
conditions of existence’ (Bourdieu 1984:170) and
one’s social position (position in the field of the
conditions of existence) structure practices and
perceptions. The concept of habitus denotes the
way in which the total sum of the social experience
of different groups in society shapes their
understanding of, and practices in, social reality.
As mentioned, habitus reflects the social position
of a specific actor, and constitutes a disposition
that influences an individual’s thoughts, feelings
and actions. The major contribution that
Bourdieu’s analysis can make to the understanding
of lifestyles is in revealing the way lifestyles ‘not
only reflect social differences in ways of living, but
reproduce them’ (Abel et al 2000:62).
According to Abel et al (2000:62), Bourdieu’s
analysis of lifestyles implies that ‘life chances
determine lifestyle choices’. Bourdieu’s concept of
lifestyle, however, does not entail rigid determinism,
since habitus functions as a mediating concept,
dissolving the opposition between the individual and
the social by demonstrating how society, in the
individual, produces durable dispositions ‘to think,
feel, and act in determinate ways’ (Wacquant 2004).
Consequently, Bourdieu (1987) insists that a theory
of society requires both an ‘objectivist’ and a
‘subjectivist’ moment. This requires an analysis of
the social structure and the conditions and positions
in this structure, together with an analysis of the
representations that people have of the social
world they live in and, further ‘… the contribution
they make to the construction of the vision of that
world’ (Bourdieu 1987:10). The instrument for
reconciling the objectivist and the subjectivist
stance is habitus, which can be understood as a
‘practical sense’ (Bourdieu and Waquant 1992)
or ‘practical reason’ (Lasch and Urry 1994:45)
and implies an embodied, rather than merely
cognitive, relation to the world. Habitus makes
social life stable and predictable since it implies
the experience of individuals is perceived ‘through
categories already constructed by prior
experiences’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992:133),
and thereby making some thoughts, feelings and
actions reasonable while sorting out others. Thus,
habitus is not primarily a matter of conscious (or
Volume 17, Issue 1, June 2008

rational) calculation, but rather a ‘social sense’
developed through socialisation enabling
individuals to experience, recognise and live in
the social world they where bor n into.
Furthermore, it is, for Waquant (2004), also
‘transferable to various domains of practice’ (e.g.
the habitus structures career ambitions as well as
one’s choice of leisure activities) since the habitus
is the structuring principle of thoughts, feelings,
and actions in different situations across time.
Habitus is thus, both structured and structuring;
that is, it is shaped by the conditions of existence
and experiences of past social milieus, whilst at
the same time structuring actions and
representations in the present. It is also
characterised by inertia and is ‘enduring but not
static or eternal’ (Wacquant 2004). One’s habitus
will probably change during one’s life, but it does
so slowly and tends to keep one’s social career in
a stable trajectory.
Using the concept of habitus, Bourdieu (1987)
is able to show that individuals are always both
‘classifiable’, insofar as their preferences and acts
can be attributed to their ‘position within
classifications’, and ‘classifying’, in the sense that
they judge and value their own and others’
preferences and acts. While the ‘objectivist
moment’ of the habitus is shaped by both the
objective conditions of existence and the social
position of the agent, the ‘subjectivist moment’ of
the habitus relates to the ways in which the actor
experiences and values her/his own preferences
and acts, as well as those of others and, on the
basis of this process of valuation, orients herself/
himself in social space. Thus, the habitus includes
both the individual propensity to value objects and
acts in the everyday social world, and the social
conditions structuring this propensity. This means
that the social conditions (economic and cultural
capital) of different social groups will make the
members of those groups inclined to value their
own experiences, understandings, and values as
normal and natural, while the cultural experiences
and expressions of other groups will appear as
more or less foreign. Thereby the symbolic
struggles of cultural legitimacy and dominance,
which Bourdieu claims to be pivotal to modern
society, are introduced into the analysis.
Volume 17, Issue 1, June 2008
The symbolic power of ‘healthy lifestyles’
Fields of power and symbolic
struggles
A fundamental assumption of Bourdieu’s theory of
society is that resources are always scarce and
society as such (‘the social space’) is hierarchically
ordered according to the distribution and
composition of different forms of capital (resources).
The main forms of capital structuring the social
space are economic and cultural capital. Individuals
are thus distributed in social space according to
their overall volume of capital, the composition of
different forms of capital, and the change in the
volume and composition of their capital over time
(Bourdieu 1987:4). The volume and composition
of economic and cultural capital is also the basis of
the ‘objective conditions of existence’ of different
groups in society; economic resources and
educational attainment are, for example, primary
means of shaping conditions of existence for
everyday life. This also means that such resources
shape the fundamental conditions for different
lifestyle-choices, which in turn, influence the diverse
health outcomes in society.
The social space should, however, also be
understood as a field of forces, where social
groups (individuals with similar positions and
conditions of existence) occupy different positions
in social space, and take part in power relations
and strategies to achieve social distinction. Using
the language of economics, Bourdieu (e.g.
1991:66-89) describes processes of social and
cultural reproduction as akin to an ‘investment’
in different forms of capital. Access to relevant
forms of capital and the ability to invest in them
and, ultimately, to make profits in symbolic
markets (fields), form the primary means of social
power in society. Voluntary engagement in social
clubs or in student activity might, for example,
be understood as investments in this sense. Such
social engagement produces social capital which
might be of great value in other social contexts,
for example when one applies for a job.
Individuals in positions with relatively small
volumes of capital have few opportunities to
make investments and derive profits, while those
who have an abundance of capital can invest in,
and profit from, the symbolic struggles in different
fields of power. This ‘social economy’ therefore
HEALTH SOCIOLOGY REVIEW 21
Peter Korp
tends to reproduce existing imbalances in the
distribution of different forms of capital in society.
The same also applies to cultural preferences
and tastes, which are never ‘pure’, but
distinctions, that is, claims to the superiority of
specific cultural preferences and tastes.
Distinctions emphasise distances in the
multidimensional system of social relations which
make up the social world; and the dominance of
the preferences and tastes of some groups
establish social hierarchies. This also implies that
in the social world, power relations are
transformed into symbolic struggles for ‘good
taste’ and cultural dominance. On the most
fundamental level, power is equivalent to the
economic and cultural capital of different groups,
and the symbolic value ascribed to the available
capital in different situations.
Social power and the ability to define the
‘legitimate vision of the social world’ (Bourdieu
1987:13) is, thus, a matter of possessing
economic and cultural ‘assets’, coupled with the
ability to exchange these assets for symbolic
power and cultural dominance. The notion of
symbolic power recurs frequently in Bourdieu’s
work. Symbolic power is defined as ‘a power of
constituting the given through utterances, of
making people see and believe, of confirming or
transforming the vision of the world and, thereby,
action on the world and thus the world itself’
(Bourdieu 1991:170). This definition focuses on
the use of language as a means in the struggle
for the legitimate representation of the world.
Representations are, however, not produced as
a free act of individual agents but, rather, are
supported by social institutions of power. The
act of naming (and of representing) is an act that
requires an agent who is recognised as a
legitimate spokesperson (Bourdieu 1991:170).
It follows that the concept of symbolic power
refers to the institutionalised production of
consensus and the relations of domination that
are the result of such production.
The habitus and the field
This paper argues, along with Bourdieu and
Wacquant (1992:127-128), that the twin
concepts of habitus and field ‘stick together’. The
22 HEALTH SOCIOLOGY REVIEW
practical sense of the habitus is only applicable
in certain social contexts; that is, in those contexts
in which it was once structured. Habitus should,
thus, primarily be understood as a ‘practical
intuition’ (Bourdieu 1987) and a practical
competence which enables individuals to think,
feel, and act in appropriate ways in specific social
contexts. It is these social contexts that Bourdieu
refers to as fields and which, on the one hand,
shape the habitus and, on the other, provide it
with a meaningful environment. According to
Bourdieu and Wacquant, the relationship
between the two concepts works in two ways;
the field structures the habitus, and the habitus
‘contributes to constituting the field as a
meaningful world’ (1992:127).
The concept of field thus forms the foundation
of Bourdieu’s ‘relational thinking’ (Bourdieu and
Wacquant 1992:96-97). A relational
understanding of society and social interaction
in general is an attempt to break with a
‘substantialist mode of thinking’ (Bourdieu and
Wacquant 1992:228), and focuses upon the
intrinsic properties of individuals and social units.
A relational analysis (or, rather, methodology),
on the other hand, emphasises the (power)
relations between positions (capital) and
dispositions (habitus) within social fields, as well
as between different fields.
One implication of placing the habitus in the
centre of the notion of lifestyles is that lifestyles
can be understood as everyday practices;
thoughts, feelings and actions, structured by the
social experience of agents and, thus, structured
in the social space according to the various social
positions and conditions of existence of agents.
But it also implies different lifestyles are an
expression of the various social positions and
conditions of existence, displayed and valued in
fields of power. This illustrates the importance
of the way in which the dominant and established
order of a social field defines the different agents
and their habitus, as well as the ways in which
different agents and their habitus are defined in
social space at lar ge. As Jukka Gronow
(1997:163) puts it: ‘Lifestyles are ‘played’ for
others and in front of others and thus are always
formed in a reciprocal relation with others’.
Volume 17, Issue 1, June 2008

Gronow’s (1997) notion of lifestyles as a series
of acts in the performance of a play highlights
the expressive dimension of ‘life styling’ and the
distinctions and position inherent in this play.
The metaphor of a play, or a game – the act of
performance within the framework of certain
rules – is well suited to capture the nature of the
habitus and the processes of lifestyle construction.
Bourdieu (1991:179-180) often uses the
analogy of a game to capture the nature of the
concept of field. A game is all about certain
stakes, valued and desired by the players of the
game and the basis of the competition between
players. Playing the game entails making
investments in it; players take the game seriously
only to the extent they believe in its stakes. But,
as opposed to a game, the rules of a social field
are neither explicit nor codified (Bourdieu and
Wacquant 1992:98). The social field follows
certain rules, agreed upon by all the actors in the
field, but the rules are not always entirely visible
and comprehensible to all. Moreover, the rules
are, throughout the processes of social
interaction, negotiable and open to change.
In this analogy, the habitus can be equated
with the ability to play a specific game with a
degree of skill and success; the habitus is the
‘practical sense’ of the game. This practical sense
works very well in the context within which it has
been created, but might be less successful in other
contexts. The habitus makes one a competent and
skilled actor in the social milieu into which one is
socialised, but less so in other social milieus.
Similarly, the dominant players of different games
are those who have developed their skills in the
same type of game they themselves have invested
in. Less successful players are those with skills
which have been developed for another type of
game and who, consequently, lack the ability to
adapt to the rules of the present context. This is
perhaps especially obvious for working-class youth
beginning university studies; their social skills are
not well suited for the social milieu of the university
and need ‘restructuring’ in order to be competitive
(Trondman 1994). In the same vein as this, the
main argument in this article is that the notion of
the ‘healthy lifestyle’ is rooted in a specific social
context, it is prevalent among social groups
Volume 17, Issue 1, June 2008
The symbolic power of ‘healthy lifestyles’
relatively rich in economic and cultural capital, and
hence the exercise of a healthy lifestyle not only
requires certain behaviours but also a specific
attitude and bodily conduct. To have a healthy
lifestyle is, thus, an act of playing a specific game
with specific rules.
The lifestyle and vision of the individual’s own
world always appear to be natural and self-evident,
especially so if one principally resides in fields
where one’s habitus is well suited and ‘feels no
resistance’. The sense of naturalness and ease
which arises when a habitus and a field perfectly
complement one another, provides a sense of
control that accrues to agents with a dominant
position within a field. This sense is also the
starting point of what Bourdieu and Wacquant
(1992:73) call ‘doxa’; that is, the ‘uncontested
acceptance of the daily lifeworld’. Thus, doxa refers
to taken-for-granted assumptions of everyday life
and the social consensus underpinning such
assumptions. In relation to lifestyles, doxa is the
tacit acceptance of the supremacy of some choices,
that is, attitudes and behaviours, at the expense
of others. This is especially true concerning health-
related lifestyles; there tends to be strong ‘doxic’
agreement about what counts as ‘healthy living’.
This ‘doxic agreement’, or health ideology, is
based in the experience and understanding of
health and a ‘healthy lifestyle’ typical of those who
hold a dominant social position.
On the symbolic power of healthy
lifestyles
What then, are the consequences of Bourdieu’s
social theory for the analysis of ‘healthy lifestyles’?
First of all, as with any analysis of lifestyle and health
that is sensitive to social stratification, Bourdieu’s
conception of lifestyle highlights the fact that people
with different conditions of existence and social
position will have different chances of establishing
and maintaining a set of ‘healthy’ thoughts, feelings
and acts. Leading a healthy life is often tantamount
to specific habitual practices of everyday life. But
such practices are, according to Bourdieu,
determined by the conditions of existence and social
position of the agent and the practical sense (habitus)
bestowed upon her/him by those factors. It is well
known that different social groups have varying
HEALTH SOCIOLOGY REVIEW 23
Peter Korp
opportunities for access to resources that sustain
and develop health (Robert and House 2000). It is
also widely recognised that health-related attitudes
and behaviours differ significantly between various
social groups (Blaxter 1990). The social
mechanisms behind the health inequalities are, in
general, however, not well known and Bourdieu
offers a way to conceptualise the fundamental
principles of health inequalities in terms of social
reproduction and hegemonic power structures.
However, the application of Bourdieu’s
analysis to healthy lifestyles also questions the
very notion of what a healthy lifestyle entails.
The whole idea that a ‘healthy lifestyle’ could be
adopted by all people in society is challenged by
an analysis which ties the representation of a
‘healthy way of life’ to the position of different
groups within distinct fields of power. The
‘healthy lifestyle’ is, thus, always a representation
of the lifestyle of a specific group in society,
constructed and expressed as a means of social
distinction in specific fields of power. The
expressive aspect, focusing on lifestyles as a
means of social distinction, does not necessarily
imply, however, that individuals consciously
choose lifestyles in order to impress other people,
nor is it an act of ‘conspicuous consumption’ in
Veblen’s ([1899]1994) sense. Rather it is a
consequence of the logic of the social field; the
fields of power in society that produce distinctions
and struggles for legitimacy of different lifestyles
and visions of the world (Bourdieu 1984). Such
distinctions and struggles are as present in relation
to healthy lifestyles as in any other social area; a
‘healthy’ attitude and a healthy looking body is a
form of cultural capital of increasing importance.
This implies that a healthy attitude, lifestyle and
body possess a hegemonic element: they are
ideals for all social groups, in all social fields,
regardless of one’s capacity to achieve them.
This analysis also implies the practice of a
healthy lifestyle can be equated with the habitual
practices of groups which dominate the social
fields where healthy living is an important issue.
The symbolic power of healthy lifestyles stems
from the ability of such social groups to define
and, in society, legitimise a vision of health and
healthy living based on their own specific desires
24 HEALTH SOCIOLOGY REVIEW
and needs. A ‘healthy life’ is a life of sobriety,
which, according to Bourdieu (1984) is typical
for the middle classes, for whom slimness, bodily
grace and lifestyle moderation tend to be more
profitable investments than they are for the
working classes. Moreover, it is of course, much
easier to practice a healthy lifestyle if your habitus
naturally, and without effort, makes ‘the healthy
choice the easier choice’.
The problem of positive health
The discussion of ‘healthy lifestyles’ needs to
focus on the extent to which an ideological
representation of a ‘good’ and ‘healthy’ life is in
fact implicit in the very notion of the ‘healthy
lifestyle’. Such an ideological representation
appears to be in danger of invading the health
promotion discourse with its focus on well-being
and positive health. The notion of ‘positive health’
is central to health promotion (e.g. Downie,
Tannahill and Tannahill 1996). The core of
‘positive health’ is that it is something more than
the absence of disease and encompasses aspects
such as ‘wellness’ and ‘vigor and stamina’ (Green
and Kreuter 1999:26). However, positive health
is more than this. According to Bowling (1997:5),
positive health can be depicted as:
… the ability to cope with stressful situations,
the maintenance of a strong social support
system, integration in the community, high
morale and life satisfaction, psychological
well-being, and even levels of physical fitness
as well as physical health.
It is of course necessary to consider both the
nature of the prerequisite social conditions for
the acquisition of such health attributes, and the
taken-for-granted assumptions which combine
these prerequisites with health. Positive health
is often depicted in a way that seems to presume
large amounts of social and cultural capital. The
implication is that specific ideals of health and
healthy living dominate the health promotion
discourse. Since these ideals are held out as a
definite and neutral representation of health,
while in reality they are produced and maintained
by specific social groups, the effect is a discourse
promoting specific values and norms regarding
Volume 17, Issue 1, June 2008

healthy living, while at the same time unable to
understand other values and norms.
This problem is obvious when positive health
becomes operationalised in research about actual
behaviours and attitudes. Health lifestyle
measures are often under-pinned with theoretical
presumptions about the benefits of specific
attitudes and behavioural patterns, and these
presumptions often carry implicit references to
the social and cultural conditions of life, and the
values and norms of a relatively affluent middle-
class (which also tends to be the social position
of the researcher posing the questions). Often,
such measures are, on the one hand, about health
concerns and worries, as well as, on the other,
rules about how much to drink, eat, and exercise
(e.g. Abel 1991). According to Bourdieu (1984)
such attitudes and behaviours, and, not the least,
the taken-for-grantedness of their benefits, vary
with social class.
Conclusions
The notion of ‘healthy lifestyle’ is fundamentally
political. It exercises symbolic power in the sense
that it legitimises certain ways of thinking, feeling
and acting at the expense of others. However
symbolic power is not a conscious act of
misrepresentation but a silent act of social
domination through the tacit application of a
taken-for-granted (doxic) world-view. This world-
view derives from conditions of existence typical
for those who are relatively affluent in economic
and cultural capital, putting them at a safe
distance from impoverishment. It is their view of
health, and their notions of a good life which
dominate the discourse of healthy living, simply
because this discourse is rooted in, and takes
place, predominantly in social fields where the
habitus of such groups sets the social and cultural
standards.
Thus, the discourse of ‘healthy lifestyles’ is
ideological, although not in the sense that specific
actors consciously force their world-view upon
others, but rather because ‘the rules of the game’
of healthy living, and its practical acquisition, are
unconsciously set out by the specific standards
of specific actors. This doxa, and the symbolic
power inherent within it, needs to be brought to
the surface of the debate over healthy lifestyles
Volume 17, Issue 1, June 2008
The symbolic power of ‘healthy lifestyles’
within health promotion and medical sociology.
Health experts need to know what it is they are
promoting and the ideological presumptions
behind their strategies. It may well be that a
western middle-class lifestyle is the healthiest
option, and should be promoted. Regardless of
its ‘truth’ value, however, health promoters need
to know exactly what it is they are doing.
Acknowledgements
Valuable comments by Jane Edwards and two
anonymous reviewers are gratefully acknowledged.
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