Young People and the Aesthetics of Health Promotion ─ Beyond Reason, Rationality and Risk

Health promotion and education have traditionally focused on the design of programs based on behaviour change theory to target ‘unsafe’, ‘unhealthy’ and/or ‘risky’ behaviours. Models such as participatory (peer-led) facilitated discussion encourage the development of reasoned, rational and risk-aware personal strategies, as well as resistance and assertiveness skills, and form an integral part of the design of many ‘successful’ health promotion interventions and programs.

Presenting an innovative and critical perspective on young people and health promotion, this book has a particular, but not sole, focus on the implementation of these strategies in a school setting. The book examines the deeper dimensions of meaning-making within health promotion programs via an emphasis on the aesthetic and affective dimensions of young people’s engagement with issues such as road safety, sexualities, alcohol and drug use and physical and mental health and well-being.

This book makes a significant and innovative contribution to thinking about the array of health promotion programs that target young people by identifying and analysing the aesthetic dimensions of program design and delivery that create the possibilities for meaning-making. Offering an exploration of the limits and possibilities of traditional health behaviour change models and their focus on reason, risk and rationality, this book will appeal to researchers and practitioners in the fields of health promotion and health education, public health, education, the sociology of health and illness, and youth work.

Kerry Montero is Program Manager of the Bachelor of Social Science Youth Work program at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. With a background in generalist youth work, and adolescent health promotion, education and service delivery, her research and development focus over the past fifteen years has been in the field of young drivers and other young road user safety promotion, education and policy.

Peter Kelly is Deputy Head of School (Research and Innovation) and Director, Centre for Education, Training and Work in the Asian Century, in the School of Education, RMIT University. He is a social theorist who has published extensively on young people, the practice of youth studies, social theory and globalisation. His books include,Working in Jamie’s Kitchen: Salvation, Passion and Young Workers (2009), Smashed! The Many Meanings of Intoxication and Drunkenness (2011), The Self as Enterprise: Foucault and the "Spirit" of Twenty-First Century Capitalism(2013), The Moral Geographies of Children, Young People and Food: Beyond Jamie’s School Dinners (2014), andA Critical Youth Studies for the Twenty-First Century (2015).