CAUSALITY, RESPONSIBILITY AND BLAME - CORE ISSUES IN THE CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION AND SUBTEXT OF PREVENTION

It is suggested that preventive thinking is founded in part on percept ions of causal connections, responsibility and blame. The perceived ab ility of health care and the individual to take active steps towards k eeping the body healthy is incorporated in the preventive message. It would be wrong to suppose that these messages amount to a morally neut ral description of an objective reality. Descriptions of causal relati onships, be they by individual citizens or medical professionals, are inevitably selective, based on assessments and experience in daily lif e and clinical practice. Messages from preventive campaigns and inform ation about health risks thus contain a hidden script, a culturally co nstructed subtext which is interpreted and dealt with by the actors in volved. Explanations and interpretations of health risks among 40-year -old men going through a preventive programme of cholesterolemia in a farming region in Sweden is described. How these explanations and inte rpretations are communicated and constructed in the health care situat ion, and what implications they have in the every day life of these me n, is discussed.