Cultural reflexivity in health research and practice

Abstract

Recent public health movements have invoked cultural change to improve health and reduce health disparities. We argue that these cultural discourses have sometimes justified and maintained health inequalities when those with power and authority designated their own social practices as legitimate and healthy while labeling the practices of marginalized groups as illegitimate or unhealthy. This "misrecognition," which creates seemingly objective knowledge without understanding historical and social conditions, sustains unequal power dynamics and obscures the fact that what is deemed legitimate and healthy can be temporally, geographically, and socially relative. We use examples from research across multiple disciplines to illustrate the potential consequences of cultural misrecognition, highlight instances in which culture was invoked in ways that overcame misrecognition, and discuss how cultural reflexivity can be used to improve health research and practice.