Understanding the evolving diversity of self-rated health
Re-describing measurement: understanding the evolving diversity of self-rated health
Health measurement and monitoring has been a central concern for researchers, governments, insurance companies and employers for over 7 decades. Social science engagement with this process has mainly taken two forms: studying the attitudes, beliefs or behaviours related to health, or critically relating health measurement to specific modes of social organisation in late modernity. In this paper, I draw broadly on the latter to explore the genesis and development of ‘self-rated health’ measurement from the 1950s to the present. In this, I identify three overlapping, sedimenting repertoires: one concerned with the regulation of help seeking behaviour, the second aiming to monitor ‘patient experience’ and the third focusing on the ‘embodied mind’. I argue that this evolving diversity is best understood as resulting from fluid – rather than network – relations: a process whereby the deployment of a standardising measurement is seen as partially generating or accelerating the proliferation of ‘local’ – yet to be ‘socialised’ - singularities.
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