Debating Obesity: Critical Perspectivesстатья из журнала
Аннотация: Rich, E. Monaghan, L.F. and Aphramor, L. ( eds .), Debating Obesity: Critical Perspectives . Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan , 2010 £55.00 (hbk ) X + 272 pp. ISBN: 978-0-230-22267-0 Debating Obesity: Critical Perspectives offers a wide ranging, ‘inter-disciplinary and sociologically imaginative’ (p.220) collection of research that adds a critical and practically oriented approach to weight studies. With a progressive tone, the edited collection theoretically and empirically challenges conventional ‘obesity epidemic’ perspectives. It stimulates a dialogue between health practitioners, academics from various disciplines and even fat activists voicing their common concern: that the stigma attached to fatness is reflected and reinforced in current healthcare promotion policy and practice which, without sufficient scientific proof, associates ill-health with ‘excess’ bodyweight. The authors of the edited collection argue this biased approach contributes to the promotion of fatness as ‘unhealthy, morally defunct and something to be corrected’ (p.1). In their aim to raise scientific and ethical concerns about the obesity discourse, the authors convey a ‘shared unease with how certain disciplines, institutions and organizations have been authoritatively making and reacting to alarming, if not alarmist, claims about an obesity crisis’ (p.219). This collection has certainly succeeded in expressing critical concerns on the obesity discourse and in contributing to the development of critical weight studies. Regrettably, the editors’ optimism that their work would contribute to a change in research direction in the clinical/public health practices (p.220) remains yet to be fulfilled. The book covers an impressive range of research perspectives on critical weight studies including a captivating critique of epidemiological evidence associating fatness with poor health by Paul Campos, a well-researched study on ‘Vocabularies of the Discredited Male Body’ by Lee Monaghan and Michael Hardey and an original contribution on the complex relationship between gender, femininity, body size, beauty and health by Irngard Tischner and Helen Malson. The collection pays special attention to children’s bodies, with a chapter on the ‘absent presence’ of children in anti-obesity policy (by Bethan Evans and Rachel Colls), and a chapter which discusses how surveillance practices gathering data on children’s bodies raise vital ethical questions that may affect the objective development of ‘scientific truths’ about health and may disrupt familiar relations (Chapter 6 by Emma Rich, John Evans and Laura De Pian). The seventh chapter, by fat activist Charlotte Cooper, adds to the collection’s controversial and alternative nature with a discussion on fat activism’s historical contribution to the obesity debate. The editors of the collection concede this contribution may ‘alienate’ readers with a professional aim in tackling obesity, but the editors believed it was necessary to include the fat activist approach in a collection that aims to ‘ultimately offer some contribution to a change in research direction and clinical/public health practices’ (p.220). Charlotte Cooper’s chapter presents a refreshingly non academic edge to the critical debate on obesity presenting it as a vital political, auto-ethnographic phenomenon. The practical parameter to this collection is added by nutritional specialists Lucy Aphramor and Jacqui Gingras, who offer handy suggestions for the promotion of politicised practice in the healthcare professions. Although this chapter appears to have a very specific audience (health professionals), it raises significant awareness about the current general practice and promotion of health. Surprisingly, the collection omits a discussion on the role of surgical interventions on the ‘war on obesity’ (Throsby 2009) which would arguably offer an even more critical approach to the debate. This edited collection could be particularly helpful to undergraduate and postgraduate students in social policy, health studies, the sociology of health and illness and to other social scientists researching critical weight studies and the sociology of the body. Further, as the manuscript sets out to critique the medical approach to obesity in a medically and sociologically evidenced manner, the collection should be read by practitioners and researchers in the medical and nutritional sciences. By demonstrating excellent examples of empirical research and analysis, some chapters in this collection highlight the book’s concerns more effectively than others. For instance, Paul Campos’ critical style and scientifically admirable analysis of epidemiological data on obesity and mortality rates offers an unquestionable critique to obesity discourse. Similarly, from a more sociologically imaginative perspective, the chapter ‘You Can’t Be Supersized?’ by Irmgard Tischner and Helen Malson employs a Foucauldian approach to discursively analyse the ‘experience of being large’ (p.94). This chapter offers important insight on the relationship between identity, body and femininity. Understandably, most of the research the contributors engage with is derived from a Western, Anglophone context; however, a more culturally diverse approach to the obesity discourse and to critical weight studies would add a much needed, innovative value to this collection. More culturally-varied definitions of health could aid in challenging the biomedical approach to fatness and could reveal the position of obesity discourse in the developing world. A resourceful and essential collection, Debating Obesity compiles a notable range of critical approaches to weight studies and manages to contribute to the expansion of a theoretically and empirically inspiring critique of the conventional obesity discourse. This is a very decipherable collection that gives an academic, political and practical input to the field and it will confidently motivate many more to come.
Год издания: 2011
Авторы: Anastasia Chamberlen
Издательство: Wiley
Источник: Sociology of Health & Illness
Ключевые слова: Obesity and Health Practices, Pharmacology and Obesity Treatment, Obesity, Physical Activity, Diet
Открытый доступ: closed
Том: 33
Выпуск: 6
Страницы: 966–967