Health and the Construction of the Individual

How do social scientists create facts? What strategies do they use to construct knowledge? How does social science make sense of the individual? Critical studies of both medical and scientific knowledge have been conducted but social science knowledge remains relatively unquestioned. Addressing this question, Health and the Construction of the Individual, originally published in 2002, is a social study of social science. Jane Ogden focuses particularly on constructions of the individual in health-related psychology and sociology. She explores how social science texts construct social science facts using the strategies of theory, methodology, measurement, and rhetorical boundaries and argues that the individual is not only constructed through the dissemination of social science knowledge but through the mechanics of its production. The results provide a unique insight into the transformation of the individual as an ever-changing self, from both a historical and social constructionist perspective. This title will make fascinating reading for health psychologists, medical sociologists, social constructionists and all students and researchers interested in gaining a greater understanding of the premises underlying social science.

List of Illustrations. Acknowledgements. 1. Introduction: Towards a Social Study of Social Science 2. Theory as Data: The Example of Health and Risk 3. Methodology as Data: The Example of Sex Research 4. Measurement as Data: The Example of Health Status 5. The Rhetorical Challenge to Biomedicine 6. Defining the Individual/Social Boundary 7. Who is the Late Twentieth-Century Individual? The Example of Diet 8. Health and the Construction of the Individual: Concluding Remarks. References. Index.

Jane Ogden