This editorial paper introduces Healthas a new journal dealing with the social scientific study of health, illness and medicine. It sets the study of health within the context of postindustrial society, pointing up the importance of recent cultural, political and technological changes for the maintenance of health and for the treatment of disease. The ideological and metaphoric features of health are discussed as a way of showing that this concept requires a wider investigation than that implied by a simple contrast with illness or with medicine. The paper discusses how ideas about health are fashioned by innovations in medical technology, commodity culture, media coverage and alternative medicine. The editors highlight these issues as ones deserving of further study and invite readers to submit papers on these and related matters for publication in future numbers of Health.
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