Constituting the Healthy Employee?

Concern for worklife health is increasing as §exemplified by the proliferation of workplace health §promotion interventions on offer. Hence, parallel §with research for the purpose of developing best §practice in health education and workplace health §promotion, it is also useful, and perhaps prudent, §to try to gain insight into how notions about health §govern the targeted subjects and what the effects are§on their sense of self. Drawing on Foucault s notion §of governmentality, this book examines the §subjectification of employees to imperatives of §health in workplace health promotion initiatives. §After identifying two health discourses that were §drawn on in these initiatives, the book investigates §the limitations and imperatives that these §discourses imposed on the participants. It also §investigates how these limitations and imperatives §were taken up and (re)contextualized, and what the §consequences were for how participants were §invited to govern and make sense of themselves as §healthy (gendered) individuals. This book should be §of use and interest to students, professionals and §researchers in the field of public health and health §education.