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“Dedicated to being healthy”: Young adults’ deployments of health-focused cultural capital
Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Sociology. Institute of Behavioral Science and Department of Sociology, University of Colorado Boulder, USA.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-6683-9146
2022 (English)In: Social Science and Medicine, ISSN 0277-9536, E-ISSN 1873-5347, Vol. 293, article id 114648Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Performances of “health” through diet, exercise, and body size are an increasingly important form of cultural capital transmitted to children. Yet less is known about how socioeconomically privileged young people internalize and deploy that capital or how those less privileged manage their relative lack of capital. How does health-focused cultural capital acquired in childhood shape socioeconomic inequalities, health behaviors, and understandings of health in young adulthood? Our analysis of 113 interviews found that health-focused cultural capital acquired in early life reinforced young adults' socioeconomic and health advantages by helping them claim discipline and morality on the basis of their health behaviors and body size. Two key phenomena tended to be present among our many socioeconomically privileged but not our fewer less privileged participants: family socialization into classed diet- and exercise-related health behaviors resulting in a classed appearance of health (despite less-than-ideal behaviors), and cohesive life course narratives linking these behaviors to hard work and moral worth. Less socioeconomically privileged participants’ understandings of health and healthy behaviors were different, rarely linking health to worthiness and discipline. To understand the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic attainment and health in US society, we must consider how behaviors and group-based norms, identities, and understandings of health coalesce in classed health lifestyles that convey cultural capital.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2022. Vol. 293, article id 114648
Keywords [en]
Health lifestyle, Cultural capital, Social disparities in health, Life course, Qualitative, Social class
National Category
Sociology (excluding Social Work, Social Psychology and Social Anthropology)
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-201761DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114648ISI: 000789630900002PubMedID: 34906829Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85120998914OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-201761DiVA, id: diva2:1635039
Available from: 2022-02-04 Created: 2022-02-04 Last updated: 2022-05-18Bibliographically approved

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Möllborn, Stefanie

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