Healthy Creativity: The Implicit Normativity of Healthy Citizenship

This project looks at how users engage with emerging health technologies, from genetic testing, to telecare, to the use of the internet for health reasons, at a time when citizens are increasingly expected to view health as a matter of personal responsibility – to practice “healthy citizenship”.

The RUBICON project seeks to shed light on a growing discrepancy between, on the one hand the dominant ideal of healthy citizenship and its critique as a normalizing discourse, and on the other hand, the various practices of patients and users of new health technologies. These localized practices seem to indicate an alternative normativity that is characterized by a creative and resourceful appropriation of the technologies that goes beyond the dominant discourse and its critique, which the project aims to articulate.

Main researcher: Dr. Tamar Sharon
Duration: September 2012 until August 2014.
Funded by NWO-Rubicon (€118.000).