Main description:

A wide range of international contributions draw on theoretical and empirical sources to explore whether alternatives exist to both conceptualise and conduct research into what people do and don t do, in relation to their health and experiences of illness. * Presents a collection of international contributions that complement, as well as critique, dominant conceptualisations of health behaviour * Includes a wide range of both theoretical perspectives and empirical cases * Reasserts the unique contribution social sciences can make to health research * Challenges assumptions about the usefulness of the concept of health behaviour * A timely publication given the rise of chronic and lifestyle diseases and the resulting changes in global health agendas

Contents:

Notes on contributors vii 1 From health behaviours to health practices: an introduction 1 Simon Cohn 2 Actors, patients and agency: a recent history 7 David Armstrong 3 A socially situated approach to inform ways to improve health and wellbeing 19 Christine Horrocks and Sally Johnson 4 A relational approach to health practices: towards transcending the agency-structure divide 31 Gerry Veenstra and Patrick John Burnett 5 Environmental justice and health practices: understanding how health inequities arise at the local level 43 Katherine L. Frohlich and Thomas Abel 6 Why behavioural health promotion endures despite its failure to reduce health inequities 57 Fran Baum and Matthew Fisher 7 Behaviour change and social blinkers? The role of sociology in trials of self-management behavior in chronic conditions 69 Bie Nio Ong, Anne Rogers, Anne Kennedy, Peter Bower, Tom Sanders, Andrew Morden, Sudeh Cheraghi-Sohi, Jane C. Richardson and Fiona Stevenson 8 Thinking about changing mobility practices: how a social practice approach can help 82 Sarah Nettleton and Judith Green 9 Providers constructions of pregnant and early parenting women who use substances 95 Cecilia Benoit, Camille Stengel, Lenora Marcellus, Helga Hallgrimsdottir, John Anderson, Karen MacKinnon, Rachel Phillips, Pilar Zazueta and Sinead Charbonneau 10 Staying in the zone but not passing the point of no return : embodiment, gender and drinking in mid-life 106 Antonia C. Lyons, Carol Emslie and Kate Hunt 11 Complexities and contingencies conceptualised: towards a model of reproductive navigation 120 Erica van der Sijpt 12 Sustained multiplicity in everyday cholesterol reduction: repertoires and practices in talk about healthy living 132 Catherine M. Will and Kate Weiner 13 Enjoy your food: on losing weight and taking pleasure 145 Else Vogel and Annemarie Mol Index 158