Illness and health in times of self-tracking, wellness and self-optimization. On the way to the health society?

Abstract

On the basis of a concrete example from the insurance industry, the text deals with fundamental shifts in the relationship between health and disease. The focus of the study is on everyday phenomena such as self-tracking and the growing wellness movement. The first part of the article analyses discourses that are built around these contemporary phenomena. The key words “self-monitoring” and “wellness” refer to two discourses that describe forms of rationalization of our everyday life. These discourses appear to be linked to fundamental socio-cultural and socio-technical changes in modern societies. Under the term “self-optimization” they are increasingly becoming the subject of sociological and cultural studies with various results, a brief overview of which is given in the text. In the second part of the article the author considers how these discourses affect our attitudes towards health and illness. It is demonstrated that the discourses of “self-monitoring” and “wellness” embody a notion of health, according to which health is not merely the absence of disease, but a product that can be created through methodical efforts and targeted self-organization and that can be constantly improved. The main thesis of the article is that such a concept of health underlies the general movement towards an ever-growing and all-pervasive society of health. A society, in which health will increasingly depart from generally accepted medical standards and thus becomes boundless.