Critical studies of the politics of public health promotion

The chapter provides an overview of existing critical social science studies of health promotion and outlines the analytical framework used in the remainder of the book. First, we review and discuss the merits and the limitations of the most influential political science, political economy, and sociological analyses, seeking to critically address contemporary politics of health. Second, we account for the Foucauldian-inspired analytical framework used in the empirical analyses. This implies accounting for the ways in which we adopt key analytical principles and concepts from Foucault’s work in order to analyse power-knowledge relations and unquestioned norms in the contemporary politics of health.