Folkhälsa som pedagogiskt projekt. : Bilden av hälsoupplysning i statens offentliga utredningar

Sammanfattning: This dissertation focuses on educational dimensions of public health as they appear in the texts of govemmental committees on Public Health (SOU) from the middle of 1930's to the middle of 1990's. By educational dimensions is meant intention to influence peoples attiudes and behaviours.The aim is to describe, analyse and compare discourses on health education as they appear in the texts. The method used is an application of poststructural text analysis based on eopragmatism and the work of Michel Foucault. Among the Foucauldian concepts used are discourse, govemmentality, power and subjectification. In the final chapter possibilities and imitations of Foucauldian analysis, in the light of a neopragmatic philosophy, are discussed. Three different discourses of health education are identified. One crucial difference concerns how relationships between individuals, state and society appear in the texts. A discourse of passive presence (in 1930's) deals with conditions and lifestyle of Swedes, but the subject constructed in the texts is essentially a passive receiver of health information antänd social eforms. A further discourse of passive absence tends not to problematize people's lifestyle and health habits at all. Towards the end of the 1970's a discourse of active presence appears in the texts. By the concept of presence is meant that people's lifestyle, health habits and living conditions once again become present in the texts. The concept active bears on the discoursive construction of a self-goveming and autonomous subject.