The dominant strand of the sociology of health promotion is its concern to analyse the phenomena as a characteristic of the much wider set of socioeconomic and cultural processes associated with late modernism. As we approach the end of the millennium many sociologists have turned their attention to the dominant social formations that appear to be emerging. Many have conceptualised the changes taking place as being part of a process of postmodernisation in which the social structures of modernity are superseded by radically new sets of arrangements (Lash and Urry, 1994). However, other writers, most notably Giddens (1990; 1991), argue that it is more appropriate to think about the contemporary period as being one in which, rather than being superseded, the central aspects of modernity are becoming significantly more dynamic and accentuated: