the sociology of fat
DESCRIPTION
This presentation covers the various sociological perspectives that can be brought to bear to research and theorise fat, both as a dietary substance and as a type of body shape or element of the body.TRANSCRIPT
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THE SOCIOLOGY OF FATDeborah Lupton, Department of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Sydney
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Model of human fat: ‘a shocking but strongly motivating attention getter’
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Body fat as ‘thing’ that must be ‘burnt off your body’
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Fat body vest: feel what it is like to be fat!
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‘Obesity is suicide’: dietary fat as dynamite
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Soft drink as fat
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The ‘Measure Up’ campaign: ‘Do you measure up?’
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Toxic fat, toxic bodies: the LiveLighter campaign
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Fatty food turning into body fat
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The headless fatty
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The fat body as unsightly and repellent
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Nigella Lawson: “I’m a great believer in fat”
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Dietary fat as gourmet delicacy
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Fat activism
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The Adipositivity Project
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‘Freedom from shame’: Health At Every Size movement
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Orthodox anti-obesity position
• obesity is a disease and leads to other diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and some types of cancer, and as a result, early death• fat bodies are pathological• there is an ‘obesity epidemic’ that must be contained• fat bodies are an economic burden on society• fat people should therefore attempt to lose weight to conform to the ‘normal’ BMI
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My study of number of obesity articles in the Sydney Morning Herald and the British Medical Journal, 1995--2011
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
SMHBMJ
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Academic challenges to the anti-obesity position
• Fat studies• Critical obesity studies/critical weight studies• Drawing on sociology, anthropology, critical psychology, cultural geography, literary studies, media and cultural studies, gender studies, queer studies, critical disability studies
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Political economic approach
• fatness as linked to sociocultural disadvantage, obesogenic environment, consumerist culture• anti-obesity discourse and medical power• drug companies, diet product producers, bariatric surgeons profiting • fat discrimination issues• fat as a feminist issue
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Obesity map of the USA: evidence of social determinants of body weight
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Sociocultural meanings of fat
• textual analysis (of media representations, public health campaigns, medical journals, interview data etc)• historical perspectives• cross-cultural perspectives
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Sociocultural meanings of fat as a dietary substance
• once a luxury, sought-after foodstuff• now reviled in many contexts• represented as a health risk, toxic to the body: ‘fat makes you fat’• portrayed as disgusting• some (expensive) fat privileged as part of gourmet cooking
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Sociocultural meanings of body fat
• fat bodies as ugly and repulsive• fat people as lacking self-discipline, lazy, ignorant• fat bodies encroaching into others’ space• the fat body as grotesque• the fat body as diseased• fat bodies as inferior• body fat as toxic
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Fat bodies/selves
• fatness as spoilt identity/stigma: Goffman• phenomenology of fat embodiment: Merleau-Ponty• the civilized body: Elias• fat bodies as assemblages: socio-technical/Deleuzian perspective
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Foucauldian perspectives
• the government of fat bodies• biopolitics and biopower• practices of the self
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Feminist philosophy
• fluidities, femininities, leaky uncontained bodies: Grosz, Shildrick• the abject body: Kristeva
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Queer theory: queering fatness
• cultural construction of embodiment/identity• embodiment and identity as unstable and performative• the challenging of normativity
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Fat activism
fat activi
sm
feminism
queer politics
disability
politics
Health At
Every Size
fat studies
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