The healthy hard worker: a critical analysis of young adult South Africans’ discursive constructions of health

Abstract

This qualitative study explores how a small group of young adult South Africans discursively construct health during in-depth semi-structured interviews, and the ways in which these discourses are used to construct subjectivity. Data was collected from 20 mostly white, university educated participants and were analysed using Foucauldian discourse analysis. One of the discourses identified, ‘health and work’, is discussed with a specific focus on the construction of subject positions and the possible implications these have. We explore the personal implications of how the use of ‘health and work’ discourses construct participants as in alignment with moral norms. However, we also argue that these discourses individualise the responsibility for (ill)health and deploy the association between good health and virtue to perpetuate capitalist notions of the work ethic and neoliberal ideologies which are implicated in the perpetuation of health inequities.