Culture, arts and health: A multi-disciplinary Swedish perspective

The primary aim of this article is to introduce how culture and health, as a field of enquiry as well as practice, is organized conceptually in Sweden. A secondary and minor aim is to launch a more general discussion of the relationship between ‘culture’, ‘arts’ and ‘health’ and their implication for multi-disciplinary research. After introducing how ‘Culture and Health’ as an academic as well as applied field of enquiry has been introduced in Sweden and giving some examples of current research, I relate this project to a more general discussion of definitions of health and culture in a Swedish and an English-speaking setting. In particular, I show that ‘Culture and Health’ in a Swedish setting encompasses both ‘Arts and Health’ and ‘Medical Humanities’. Finally, I offer some pragmatic considerations on why a multi-disciplinary perspective is vital for ‘Culture and Health’, ending up in a concluding presentation of the implications of this multi-disciplinarity for the organization of the field of ‘Culture and Health’ in Sweden.