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Health, Wellbeing & Active Citizenship

Dr. Steve Swindells

Dr. Carole Wright

Dr. Steve Swindells

Dr. Carole Wright

Institute for Health Citizenship:J Avis, C Gifford, P Fisher, A Locke

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Institute for Health Citizenship

The Institute for Health Citizenship is concerned with trans-disciplinary and innovative approaches toward a range of contemporary topics on the interface between health, wellbeing and citizenship

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In Context FE Steering Group Rhetoric

‘to create a learning environment where positive well-being is the expectation for all, producing learners and staff who are confident, healthy, safe, emotionally resilient and personally fulfilled’

Healthy FE Steering Group, December 2008

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The Researcho Understanding of health and wellbeing in FE

o Explore extent to which trainee FE lecturers’ subscribe to dominant health messages

o How do they perceive their role as educator in response to health/wellbeing?

o Pilot use of images of contemporary art in focus groups

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Use of Contemporary Art Images as prompts for Focus Group

o Photo-elicitation

o Designed to trigger emotional reactions

o “Nine Nude Puffs in an Orgy” (Prosser 1992)illicit provocative images

o Contemporary art photographs

o Photographs of contemporary art

o Explore discourses around meanings, values, differences (Prosser & Schwartz 1998)

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Gillian Wearing (1992-93): Signs That Say What You Want Them to Say and Not Signs That Say What Someone Else Wants You to Say

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Rineke Dijkstra (1994): Saskia, Harderwijk, Netherlands, March 16 1994

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Duane Hanson (1988): Tourists II

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Preliminary Findings • Surveillance: regulation through education, the

internal gaze, internalising health policy

• Resistance: the activity of looking being nonjudgmental – art to provoke, cajole, disrupt

• Moral discourse: to be ‘overweight’ is immoral, our responsibility to choose ‘health’ - stigmatisation and ostracisation of Other

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Moral Discourses• WHO (2002) reported obesity as “a global

epidemic”

• “Food has become profoundly medicalised in its association with health, illness and disease.” (Lupton 2005: 449)

• Stigma and discrimination is strengthened by official discourse and interventions

• “Unhealthy”

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Ron People think that you are gonna-everybody thinks you’re going to end up like that.

Scarlet But what’s wrong with it though? Why?Maureen It’s unhealthy!Ron It’s very unhealthy! (smiles)Scarlet Yeah, but apart from the weight, is anybody looking at

anything else or are we just looking at the size?Louise I’d be more worried about their psychological state than

the physical state.Maureen But if you had, like, the girl on your right in one of your

lessons, would you not feel obligated to sort of help?Louise I’d want to try and make her smile.Maureen Yeah, if she was noticeably unhappy in your lessons,

but…Bill But how do you approach that? I’ve got a girl a bit like

that and, you know, I’m just gonna ask “stay at the end of the class please.” Where do you start? That’s a whole kettle of fish?

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Louise But you’d have to recognise that she’s not necessarily unhappy because she’s overweight. She might be overweight because she’s unhappy.

Scarlet For medical reasons, like.Jean And sometimes if you’re on medication it can affect

your weight as well, so there might be other health issues.

Louise And also are they that overweight that they’re actually unhealthy because of it?

Maureen. They can be happy with their weight, but they’re still unhealthy at the end of the day!

Louise But are they? If you were to test her BMI it wouldn’t be probably as high as you-I know BMI’s a nonsense, but you know, when you look at where you take your fat from, she’s not actually that fat.

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ReferencesHealthy FE Steering Group

http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/page.aspx?o=245671

Lupton, D. (2005)’Lay discourses and beliefs related to food risks: an Australian perspective.’Sociology of Health & Illness, Vol. 27 No. 4, 448-467.

Prosser, J. (1992) ‘Personal Reflection on the Use of Photography in an Ethnographic Case Study’, British Educational Research Journal, 18: 4, 397-411.

Prosser, J. & Schwartz, D. (1998) ‘Photographs Within the Sociological Research Process.’ In Jonathan Prosser (Ed) (1998) Image Based Research: A Sourcebook for qualitative Researchers. Abingdon: RoutledgeFalmer.

Rose, G. (2007) (2nd Ed) Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials. London: Sage