A healthy society according to the precepts of this volume is one in which there no longer exist extremes of material and social inequality; greater equality is not achieved domestically at the price of dominating, exploiting and exporting inequality to semi-peripheral and peripheral societies; there is urgent, appropriately phased action against climate change, but not involving loss for the poorest and most disadvantaged nationally, regionally and globally; and in which the society makes a discernible and effective effort to enhance individual security at home and abroad by pursuing peace. Britain is manifestly not a healthy society by these criteria, and less so in post- 1970s rentier than in postwar welfare state capitalism. There are some signs that public health thinking is changing, however. For example, Dina Von Heimburg and colleagues (2022) commend reconceptualising the field of public health as a public good. They advocate universal wellbeing as an organising principle for the economy. This sees economic systems as mechanisms to serve the common good and safeguard public interests rather than pursuing growth ‘as a mission in its own terms’:

They go on to specify the need for comprehensive programmes of global action, local action and people action:

But what remains missing from these admirable aspirational objectives (realism 1) is any sense of the intricate economic and geopolitical potency of the obstacles to their realisation (realism 2). And this is where sociology might/should contribute to the debate.