Measuring Subjectification: The Reception of Health Education Campaigns and the Evaluation Conundrum

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to analyse how, from the 1970s onwards, the organization in charge of planning and implementing health education in France was led to reflect on the true effect on the public of the films, radio messages, posters, etc. it produced. After detailing how a tiny group of ‘modernizers’ aimed to harness the apparently pervasive power of advertising for the benefit of public health, I explore the difficulties they encountered in their attempt to evaluate their mass media campaigns. Interestingly, the conception of human behaviour and risk taking that underlay the evaluative method which they devised for that purpose strongly echoes some of Michel Foucault’s most famous analyses on what he termed ‘problematization’ and ‘subjectification’ processes.