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The risks of lifestyle and the diseases of civilisation
Miranda Hughes
Centre for the Body and Society, Faculty of Arts, Deakin University, VIC
Abstract
Current conceptions of being at risk for diseases of civilization put bodies into a state of transition. The prevailing emphasis on categorising and cataloguing risk factors according to lifestyles is creating a new type of absent body, but one that is in a sense 're-ified' into an abstraction of its former self - we are becoming sorts of 'non-bodies' that experience 'virtual illness' and 'virtual health'. Being at risk for any of the numerous fashionable diseases places the body in a state of transitional ambivalence where bodies are both well and ill at the same time. But how do we negotiate risk and how is it decided what lifestyle risks cause diseases of civilisation?
The social construction of risk and that relationship to the labelling of certain illnesses as 'diseases of civilization' will be outlined in this paper. Using the example of the attempts to control coronary heart disease, the 'number one killer' in Western Civilisation, I will explore the interaction between the labelling of some diseases as 'diseases of civilisation', 'lifestyle diseases', 'self-inflicted illnesses', 'man-made diseases', 'western diseases' or 'diseases of affluence', and the normalisation of the ideal of health which is promoted as being achievable through a natural, healthy diet and lifestyle that is somehow devoid of risk. The rapidly increasing use of risk factors in regulating acceptable behaviour will be studied. The processes involved in the tacit incorporation of socio-cultural and economic values into medical science itself will be examined, thus providing another example of how current medical theory and practice is one expression of the post-modern attitude to the body.
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