EMBODIED HEALTH MOVEMENTS AND CHALLENGES TO THE DOMINANT EPIDEMIOLOGICAL PARADIGM

Abstract

Health social movements address several issues: (a) access to, or provision of, health care services; (b) disease, illness experience, disability and contested illness; and/or (c) health inequality and inequity based on race, ethnicity, gender, class and/or sexuality. These movements have challenged a variety of authority structures in society, resulting in massive changes in the health care system. While many other social movements challenge medical authority, a rapidly growing type of health social movement, “embodied health movements” (EHMs), challenge both medical and scientific authority. Embodied health movements do this in three ways: (1) they make the body central to social movements, especially with regard to the embodied experience of people with the disease; (2) they typically include challenges to existing medical/scientific knowledge and practice; and (3) they often involve activists collaborating with scientists and health professionals in pursuing treatment, prevention, research, and expanded funding. We present a conceptual framework for understanding embodied health movements as simultaneously challenging authority structures and allying with them, and offer the environmental breast cancer movement as an exemplar case.

Citation

Zavestoski, S., Morello-Frosch, R., Brown, P., Mayer, B., McCormick, S. and Gasior Altman, R. (2004), "EMBODIED HEALTH MOVEMENTS AND CHALLENGES TO THE DOMINANT EPIDEMIOLOGICAL PARADIGM", Myers, D.J. and Cress, D.M. (Ed.) Authority in Contention (Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, Vol. 25), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 253-278. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0163-786X(04)25010-8