Place-Identity and Geographical Inequalities in Health: a Qualitative Study

Psychological research on health inequalities has yet to consider the geographical dimension to these injustices. The study reported here is aimed to describe accounts of health, well-being and place-identity associated with two inner-city locales within a southern English city, distinct in terms of the health of their populations, to advance psychosocial explanations of geographical inequalities in health. Thirty participants, sampled using a combination of purposive and theoretical strategies, completed semi-structured interviews which were subsequently analysed using discourse analysis. The three key themes of pollution, space and community elucidate the material, psychological and social domains of place-identity in accounts of health, well-being and inequality. By centring upon the locatedness of human subjectivity, analysis of place-identity may be a useful tool in explicating how multiple dimensions of stratification interact within local contexts to reproduce geographical inequalities in health and social (dis)identification with place, without losing sight of the objective structural and material context of space