The practical usefulness of theory. Observing Health, Individualism and social systems: some working hypothesis

This contribution has two main goals: on the one hand, to observe the semantics of health and individualism and their relationship in the world-society, trying to identify some contexts where it is possible to empirically observe – through a coherent methodology – phenomena and processes. This means exploring the potential of the observation of health from the perspective of Social systems theory, in order to obtain an organic overview and also to see if, and how, it is possible to enrich the theory itself. On the other hand, some reflections will be made on the importance of theoretical work, trying to demonstrate that it is not a less important task than that of empirical research, but – on the contrary – that theory widens the possibilities of empirical research itself.