Aaron Antonovsky (1923–1994): The Personal, Ideological, and Intellectual Genesis of Salutogenesis

This chapter is of particular importance in the handbook. Written by Aaron Antonovsky’s son Avishai Antonovsky, and by one of his closest colleagues and former PhD student, Shifra Sagy, this chapter provides the first biography of the founding father of salutogenesis. The authors share their insight regarding the development of the salutogenic idea, by drawing lines connecting it to the person Aaron Antonovsky was. They were very close to Aaron for several decades, and their familiarity with his background contributes to understanding the development of salutogenesis. They shed some light on Aaron’s personal experiences, ideological beliefs, and professional development throughout his life, until the crystallization of the salutogenic idea.

The Application of Salutogenesis for Social Support and Participation: Toward Fostering Active and Engaged Aging at Home

In this chapter, the authors discuss some important aging factors that could increase the likelihood of a stronger sense of coherence (SOC): aging at home, participation, and social support. In his last paper, Aaron Antonovsky (1993) highlighted an example of an intervention among older people, living in their homes, who refused to accept help. He suggested that if researchers had been guided by the salutogenic question of “how to strengthen the comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness of elders,” their intervention research could have been much more sophisticated and rich. The authors are addressing this call. In this chapter, they analyze how social support, active participation, mobility, and other factors can strengthen SOC in old age. They also bring some examples of individual and community programs that are already operating within this salutogenic orientation.

The Application of Salutogenesis in Politics and Public Policy-Making

In this chapter, the authors thoroughly discuss the different possibilities of applying salutogenesis in politics and public policy. Politics is one of the upstream conditions that shape our individual lives as well as our society. Thus, asking about if and how salutogenesis can be applied to this field appears to be a most significant subject in Part IV of the Handbook relating to salutogenesis beyond health. In all of his writing about his model, Aaron Antonovsky emphasised how politics and policies contribute to shaping individual and collective abilities to strengthen salutogenic resources. The authors of this chapter approach this issue from the opposite direction, asking, ‘how can salutogenesis contribute to outlining strategies and structural processes linked to politics and policymaking?’ Their creative discussion succeeds in bringing the reader the utility of the salutogenic approach in addressing such issues.

Applying Salutogenesis in the Workplace

This chapter presents models, measures, and intervention approaches that relate to the double nature of work and its salutogenic quality. Hereby, the view of Aaron Antonovsky is enhanced insofar that health-promoting, salutogenic job characteristics are not solely understood as mitigating the pathogenic effects of stressors at work but have a distinct effect on positive health outcomes. In the chapter, Antonovsky’s original model is first specified and simplified for the context of work. Next, Antonovsky’s line of thinking is related to frameworks researching job resources and demands. After a review of the prevalence of salutogenic measures in worksite health promotion, the point of making salutogenesis more visible in work-related research and practice is elaborated. This is illustrated with a practical example of a survey-feedback process promoting salutogenic work.

Salutogenesis beyond Health

Aaron Antonovsky enriched us with a unique, challenging model of salutogenesis, which had high levels of comprehensibility, manageability, and especially meaningfulness. When he passed away, about 25 years ago, we wondered whether, and perhaps how, the model would be developed after him. To witness today, the rich and active development of the model is deeply exciting. Part IV, Salutogenesis Beyond Health, deals with new developments and creative advancements of the theory.It is very tempting to continue Antonovsky’s way by using his strict guidelines for salutogenic research. However, he also taught us “it is wise to see models, theories, constructs, hypotheses, and even ideas as heuristic devices, not only truths.” The chapters included in this part of the handbook represent good examples of following this advice.

Salutogenesis Post-Graduate Education: Experience From the European Perspective on the ETC-PHHP Health Promotion Summer Schools (1991–2020)

In this chapter, the authors, representing The Netherlands, Spain, Germany, Italy, Norway, the United Kingdom and Poland, trace the development of higher education in salutogenesis in Europe, spanning 30 years. At this time, the annual summer schools of the European Training Consortium in Public Health and Health Promotion (ETC-PHHP) have trained more than 700 participants from 60 countries. Perhaps the most distinguished member of the summer school’s faculty – at least from the perspective of advancing salutogenesis as a theory for health promotion – is Aaron Antonovsky, who participated in the 1992 edition of the course in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Resilience in the Salutogenic Model of Health

This chapter discusses the question, how does Antonovsky’s salutogenic model of health address the concept resilience? Resilience scholarship focuses on coping processes in persons and groups who experience severe adversity and deprivation, while salutogenic processes are posited to be descriptive of coping in all persons. Resilience scholarship has always had a focus on developing interventions to help people do well in life despite barriers, while salutogenesis has until recently been more concerned with descriptive research. Resilience and salutogenesis share the perspective that coping is culturally and contextually bounded. Resilience scholarship is principled, but no single, articulated theory is dominate. Salutogenesis is well developed as a theory, following the scholarship of Aaron Antonovsky. The concept resilience does not have a formal place in salutogenesis theory, yet when salutogenesis scholars focus on coping under conditions of severe adversity, they apply resilience approaches and strategies, even if the concept resilience is not explicit.

SELECTED FACTORS AFFECTING THE EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITY OF ADULTS

The aim of the article is to show the importance of educational activity of adults in the process of intentional designing one’s life: flexible actions depending on the needs and overcoming the deficits. The life-long education and the learning competences are essential in today’s world, that is why a closer look was taken on educational activity of adults and to research their ability to perform a self-directed learning and diagnose their learning motivation. The problem was examined in the salutogenesis paradigm, which was first defined by Aaron Antonovsky. The key concept for Antonovsky’s concept is the sense of coherence (SOC), which is a constant disposition of personality in adult life and determines the way we think, interpret, and make decisions and actions in our lives. The sense of coherence is characterized by a dimensional character (from weak to strong SOC) and is defined as a global orientation expressed in the sense of individual certainty that its external and internal environment is understandable and meaningful and life is worth the effort and commitment (Antonovsky 1979, 1986; Antonovsky &Sagy 2001). The ability of self-directed learning was correlated with the level of sense of coherence. In this article the results of the research are presented. The research was conducted on 427 persons in Poland. The research was focused on finding different factors influencing educational activity of adults, especially on the most significant activity: self-directed learning. The dependence of chosen variables was examined, in order to point out the features which might help adults to initiate their own learning activity.

Health as Experience: Exploring Health in Daily Life Drawing From the Work of Aaron Antonovsky and John Dewey

Research has pursued salutogenic and narrative approaches to deal with questions about how everyday settings are constitutive for different health practices. Healthy behavior is not a distinguishable action, but a chain of activities, often embedded in other social practices. In this article, we have endeavored to describe such a chain of activities guided by the salutogenic claim of exploring the good living argued by McCuaig and Quennerstedt. We use biographical material written by Karl Ove Knausgaard who has created a life story entitled My Struggle. The novel is selected upon an approach influenced by Brinkmann who stresses that literature can be seen as a qualitative social inquiry in which the novelist is an expert in transforming personal life experiences into common human expressions of life. The study illustrates how research with a broader notion of health can convey experiences of health, thereby complementing (and sometimes challenging) public health evidence.

Linkage Between Traditional Architectural Elements Representing Regionalism and Achieving Salutogenesis

Cultural inferences are lost in the context of city, which can be reestablished with conscious design decisions by the architect and conscious house dwellers. Delving into those regionally established architectural elements found in Bangladesh or in the South East Asian climate, connections are found which are crucial to achieve the modern green building. Traditional architecture addresses sustainability. Salutogenesis is an approach coined by Aaron Antonovsky focusing on factors that support human health and well-being. This study draws the linkages between traditional architectural practices and achieving salutogenesis.