Avoiding Throwing out the Baby with the Bathwater

Abstract

The recent article by Gurrieri, Previte, and Brace-Govan provides an earnest, existential challenge to both social and macromarketing in the health domain, as well as more generally. Their research deals with such serious issues as obesity, breastfeeding, and exercise. Yet, while the authors draw most impressively on theoretical thinkers and perspectives, they also misconstrue what they find and contend so one-sidedly that much of what is understood as social marketing becomes obviated and consumers are ironically situated in the hands of various food and medical interests. This commentary provides a much different reading of these issues. It critically deconstructs the authors’ view and then offers a quite divergent one that takes a more balanced, if paradoxical perspective regarding health issues. While health issues are complex, and a certain problematizing indeterminacy sometimes enters in when solutions are proposed and tried, the present critique delineates the necessary roles social and macromarketing can and indeed must play in the provision of good health for all.