‘What we’ve tried, hasn’t worked’: the politics of assets based public health1

It is a paradox of recent epidemiology that as material inequalities grow, so the pursuit of non-material explanations for health outcomes proliferates. At one level, a greater recognition of psycho-social factors has deepened the understanding of the societal determinants of health, the links between mental and physical health and the social nature of human need. Too often however, psycho-social factors are abstracted from the material realities of people’s lives and function as an alternative to addressing questions of economic power and privilege and their relationship to the distribution of health. The growing influence of salutogenesis and asset-based approaches is one example of this trend. This paper reflects on the theories of public health that lie behind the discourse of assets, together with some of the reasons for, and consequences of, its popularity and influence, notably in Scotland.