(The doors closes precisely)

Assessment committee:

• Professor Hans Siggaard Jensen (chairman), Aarhus University, Department of Education
• Professor Chris Shore, Department of Anthropology, University of Auckland
• Professor, Tine Tjørnhøj-Thomsen, The National Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark

Main supervisor

• Professor Sue Wright, Aarhus University, Department of Education

The defence will be conducted in English by associate professor Jette Kofoed, Aarhus University, Department of Education.

The dissertation is available for reading at the Department of Education, Tuborgvej 164, building D, room 329, administration.

After the dissertation Department of Education will hoste a reception.

Abstract
The thesis is about the conceptualisation of knowledge associated with evidence. The Danish society is experiencing a proliferating demand for evidence, which started as the basis of medicine and has spread into social work, education and most policy making arenas, including health promotion. The aim of the research on which the thesis is based was to investigate what is considered to ‘work as evidence’ and how the evidence discourse influences social practices in the field of health promotion. From investigating knowledge practices in the field of health promotion, the thesis develops the concept of ‘sound knowledge’ as knowledge based not on evidence but on reflexive practices.

The thesis is based on an anthropological analysis of health promotion as a ‘policy world’. In this perspective, agents are informants, academic articles, statistics, theoretical ideas, evaluations as well as policy papers. For studying this, a different approach than what anthropologists normally engage in was needed. Although participatory observation and interviews were conducted when possible, part of the fieldwork was reading texts as ethnographic material.

The main argument of the thesis is a case against evidence. It is argued that the evidence discourse is constituted mainly as an imagination about evidence as certain and trustworthy which makes it to be the not only the objective result of a rigorous and standardized research method, but almost the absolute truth. In continuation of this, ‘evidence’ and ‘evidence-based’ are hegemonic ways of knowing and therefore used as arguments of quality and certainty.

However, this preludes a reflexivity that is in fact central to both research and policymaking. Reflexivity is understood as a thoughtful consideration of connections and causes, truth and trust, factual and normative aspects, taken up by agents who contest and negotiate what is knowledge and evidence. Reflexive agents enact an ideology that entangle competition, longevity, economic viability with health promotion as an idealistic aim and they connects different ideas, concepts and methodologies to constitute what can be called ‘sound knowledge’. This means that, instead of decisions being evidence-based, it could be fruitful to talk about policies as based on sound knowledge. This would emphasise the reflexive practises and make explicit the connections and considerations behind policy making as well as research.