Healthization

"What does it mean to be healthy? Is it a measure of physical illness, of a mental health condition, or of emotional control? In 21st century Aotearoa/New Zealand, it is all of the above. Being healthy here requires an investment of extensive work, resources, and time, and while it encompasses the above categories, for many young people health extends to having strong, trusted friendships, to feeling that one's emotions are being recognized while recognizing the emotions of others, creating a daily space for mindfulness, while maintaining productivity, working up the motivation to work out, quantifying and graphing nutrition stats while being able to talk openly about one's mental health, and perhaps even wearing the right lipstick. These activities are particularly salient in Aotearoa/New Zealand where the past forty years have witnessed a growing emphasis on the importance of patient "self-responsibility" and where the state has invested heavily in health, even introducing a "wellbeing budget" that tracks the economy via wellbeing measures. All of these activities add up to a concept - and a worldview - that anthropologist Susanna Trnka conceptualizes as healthization. Through this framework, managing one's emotions, keeping one's sense of "balance," and tracking the number of miles run, swum, or bicycled, become overlapping an all-consuming activities, to the point of almost encompassing life itself. By analyzing ethnographic interviews with young people, Healthization reveals the emotional, financial, and deeply personal ideas at stake as understandings of health shift in the hands of young people, who are often at the vanguard of new trends in mental health, physical fitness, and digital health technologies, as they enact what it means to be well in the 21st century"-- Provided by publisher.