Reframing health and health policy in Ireland

This edited collection is the first to apply the theoretical lens of post-Foucauldian governmentality to an analysis of health problems practices and policy in Ireland. Drawing on empirical examples related to childhood obesity mental health smoking ageing and others the collection explores how specific health issues have been constructed as problematic and in need of intervention in the Irish State and considers the strategies discourses and technologies involved in the art of governing health in advanced liberal democracies. Bringing together academics from social policy sociology political science and public health the text seeks to develop a dialogue about both the nature of health and health policy in the Ireland but also how governmentality as a theoretical approach can contribute to the development of critical health policy analysis.