ABSTRACT
Social representations (Moscovici, 1981) refer to widely shared beliefs about a phenomenon which are established and maintained through interpersonal communication. Herzlich (1973) explored social representations of health and illness. She found that her French participants viewed health as something which was taken for granted until illness struck and that they understood illness both in terms of; (i) a loss of equilibrium in individuals’ lifestyles and (ii) a limited reserve of health derived partly from inherited constitutions. Such broad characterisations of social understanding help to map out the meaningful background, or ‘common sense’, against which individuals construct representations of their own health and illness (see also Farr, 1977). They do not, however, help to identify who will become ill (see Adler & Matthews, 1994) or take preventive health action.
