The symbolic power of ‘healthy lifestyles’

Within the health promotion context, ‘lifestyle’ is a contested concept. On the one hand, it is an incontestable health determinant, and as such forms the primary focus of traditional health education; whilst, on the other, the customary usage of lifestyle within health education points to a narrow and superficial understanding of the nature of health and the priorities of health promotion. To develop a more comprehensive analysis of the structural aspects of lifestyles, recourse needs to be made to the work of sociological theories. A number of authors have turned to Pierre Bourdieu and his concept of ‘habitus’. This article draws on a hitherto neglected aspect of Pierre Bourdieu’s analysis of lifestyles, by elaborating on the implications of his concept of ‘field’, and the relational analysis implicit in this concept, as a means of gaining an understanding of ‘healthy lifestyles’.