Why Wellness Sells: Natural Health in a Pharmaceutical Culture

The concept of wellness holds such rhetorical power in contemporary culture because it is driven by two opposing philosophies of health that cycle into and amplify each other: restoration and enhancement. Colleen Derkatch's book "Why Wellness Sells" explores the tension between these two ideas of wellness across a variety of sources, demonstrating that it serves primarily as a strategy for coping with a devastating and overwhelming present. It entrenches an individualist model of health as a personal responsibility, when collectivist approaches would more readily serve the health and well-being of whole populations.

Format: Hardback
Length: 272 pages
Publication date: 07 February 2023
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press

In her book "Why Wellness Sells," Colleen Derkatch delves into the compelling and often harmful power of the concept of wellness in contemporary culture. The public's interest in wellness is driven by two opposing philosophies of health: restoration, where individuals seek to restore themselves to prior states of well-being through the use of natural health products, and enhancement, where individuals strive for maximum wellness by optimizing their body's systems and functions.

Throughout the book, Derkatch explores the tension between these two wellness ideas across various sources, including interviews, popular and social media, advertising, and online activism. She examines how wellness manifests itself in different domains, where being well means different things, ranging from a state of pre-illness to an empowered act of good consumer-citizenship, from physical or moral purification to sustenance and care, and from harm reduction to optimization.

Derkatch demonstrates that the idea of wellness may promise access to the good life, but it serves primarily as a strategy for coping with a devastating and overwhelming present. Drawing on scholarship in the rhetoric of health and medicine, the health and medical humanities, and related fields, Derkatch offers a nuanced account of how language, belief, behavior, experience, and persuasion collide to produce and promote wellness, one of the most compelling and harmful concepts that govern contemporary Western life.

She explains that wellness has become so pervasive in the United States and Canada because it is an ever-moving, and thus unachievable, goal. The concept of wellness entrenches an individualist model of health as a personal responsibility, when in reality, health is a collective and societal responsibility.

In conclusion, "Why Wellness Sells" is a thought-provoking and important book that sheds light on the rhetorical power of the concept of wellness in contemporary culture. By examining the tension between restoration and enhancement, Derkatch challenges readers to think critically about the ways in which wellness is marketed and promoted, and to consider the broader societal implications of this pervasive and often harmful concept.

Weight: 499g
Dimension: 229 x 152 x 24 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781421445281