Turning a Lifestyle into a Disease: Analyzing the Scientific Promotion of a Healthy Lifestyle

• In Event: Postphenomenology - III: The Boundaries of Humans and Technologies

Abstract

Currently, several scientific projects are devoted to the promotion of a healthy lifestyle. The development and use of health-tracking technologies is thought to be a key factor for the success of such projects. The assumption underlying such projects is that an increase in knowledge—mediated by health-tracking technologies—about several health parameters (e.g., food intake, physical activity) will motivate individuals to more actively pursue a healthy lifestyle. By attaining knowledge of the relation between one’s lifestyle and one’s biology, individuals are able to take responsibility for their health status, so it is thought. In this paper, I problematize this assumption from two different perspectives: Firstly, I show that such projects problematically assume that ‘responsibility’ is a static concept, and fail to take into account that what is taken to be responsible is mediated by the health tracking technologies used. Secondly, I show that a scientific perspective on health assumes a rather specific distinction between the ‘normal’ and the ‘pathological’, which does not need to coincide with the way this distinction is drawn by the targeted individuals. To conclude with, I argue that the seemingly objective promotion of a healthy lifestyle by means of scientific knowledge is in fact a strongly normative promotion of a particular form of subjectivity.

Author

• Bas de Boer, University of Twente (the Netherlands)