Public Health Local and Global Perspectives

This chapter explores the assumptions and struggles of public health’s long history. It is an opportunity to question what public health is and where it is going, based on where it has been. Following the social philosopher Michel Foucault (1926–84), the public health knowledge presented is viewed as a product of its time, culture and context rather than the result of progress: a linear path of discovery (Foucault, [1969] 2002). Accordingly, this chapter examines current public health principles and practices resulting from the actions of historic heroes and innovators as much as chance and folly. This chapter introduces readers to the different lenses through which public health has been viewed and practised, from individualist, behaviourist and biomedical perspectives through to cultural and socio-environmental; from ancient Greece to 19th-century Prussia. Australia’s and New Zealand’s histories are also explored, showing how different approaches to public health have (de)emphasised the importance of collective action. The chapter concludes with an examination of this tension in contemporary public health: tobacco control.