The Discursive Formation and Power Effect of the Imagination of Healthy Body--Analyzing the Social Construction Process of Health Food

• Main Authors: Chia-hui Tsai, 蔡佳憓
• Other Authors: Ping Chou
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/ckszw7

碩士 === 南華大學 === 社會學研究所 === 95 === 　　This is the era that people are highly attentive to the issues of body and health, especially the idea of “Lohas.” But what causes people to enthusiastically pursuing the trend of being healthy? Since people are convinced that healthy body is related to what we eat, so that today’s health food industry can make use of the theory of “eat therapy” of traditional culture as its basis, and in the course of the advance of bio-technology, to build up a means of pseudo-medicalization, to create unlimited marketability of health industry. Therefore, we assume the rise of Health Food Industry is a process of social construction. Due to people’s appreciation of “body,” the increase of Health Food becomes indispensably significant. Besides, throughout the formation of health discourse, people start to constantly care about their own body and health. Thus, this research employs textual analysis, plus participatory observation and in-depth interviewing, in order to scrutinize the process of Health Food’s social construction. Thereby, to understand how the formation of health discourse helps to construct the imaginary of healthy body, and in turn to implant and internalize such discourse into our body, that turns out to be a self-reflecting mechanism which complies people to the effect of “imagining reality,” and thus to actively pursue an “idealized” state of health and body.