The New Public Health: Health and Self in the Age of Risk

Achieving good health is one of the major concerns of contemporary societies. Everyone is now called upon to play their part in creating a "healthier" and "more ecologically sustainable" environment through attention to lifestyle and involvement in collective efforts to manage risk. These strategies are the mainstay of the so-called "new public health." Alan Petersen and Deborah Lupton focus critically on the new public health, assessing its implications for the concepts of self, embodiment, and citizenship. They argue that the new public health is used as a source of moral regulation and for distinguishing between self and the other. They also explore the implications of the modernist belief in the power of science and the ability of experts to solve problems through the rational administrative means that underpin the strategies and rhetoric of the new public health. Providing a new viewpoint to a highly debated issue, The New Public Health will stimulate discussion for those interested in the fields of public health and health promotion, social policy, sociology of health, and nursing.

Alan Petersen is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Murdoch University in Western Australia. His recent publications include The New Public Health: Health and Self in the Age of Risk (co-written with Deborah Lupton), Foucalut, Health and Medicine (co-edited with Robin Bunton) and Health Matters: Sociology of Illness, Prevention and Care (co-edited with Charles Waddell).

Deborah Lupton is SHARP professor in the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, UNSW Sydney, working in the Center for Social Research in Health and the Social Policy Research Center and leading the Vitalities Lab. She is the author/co-author of 17 books, the latest of which are Digital Sociology (Routledge, 2015), The Quantified Self (Polity, 2016), Digital Health (Routledge, 2017), Fat, 2nd edition (Routledge, 2018), and Data Selves (Polity, 2019). She is a fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and holds an honorary doctor of social science degree awarded by the University of Copenhagen.