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This paper explores the salience of the work of Pierre Bourdieu for theorising young men's experience of risk and drugs within a working class community in the North East of England identified by official discourses as a 'risk environment.' First, the concepts of field, habitus and practice are introduced. We then discuss the usefulness of these concepts for understanding diversity and contradiction in drug use, risk calculation and everyday life amongst a sample of young men. Data is presented from focus groups and individual interviews taken from a 3-year qualitative study of a 'risk community,' identified with reference to the incidence of crime, high unemployment and prevalence of illegal drug use in an area regeneration project. Social-structural determinants of dispositions towards drug use risk and risky behaviours are identified and the role of 'risk environment' highlighted. By combining theory with a rigorous empiricism, Bourdieu's work can be useful when exploring 'risk environments' and the concept of habitus can enhance understandings of young men's dispositions towards risk and risk taking.

Recent public health policy has emphasized the promotion of behavioural change and the achievement of healthy lifestyles as central to tackling deeply ingrained health inequalities in the UK and beyond. These approaches contrast with more upstream structural strategies that aim to address material determinants of health. A current exemplar of the behaviourist approach is the use of social marketing as a methodology in public health. Social marketing is posited as a strategy for creating ‘social good’ through importing the methods of commercial marketing into health and social policy in a range of settings, in this instance, public health. In contrast to the traditional public health goals of serving society and improving the wellbeing of populations, those of social marketing, as with other recent strategies in health and social policy, start with the management of behaviours and lifestyles, responsibility for which is placed with the individual. It is argued that this reflects a broader ‘behavioural turn’ in public health methodologies that increasingly obviate the significance of social and relational determinants of health. Qualitative data collected with a sample of public health professionals (n = 17) are discussed to examine the adoption of these new methodologies in a specific locality in the UK. The wider implications of these practices for public health strategies both nationally and internationally are considered.