Routledge Handbook of Critical Obesity Studies

Description

The Routledge Handbook of Critical Obesity Studies is an authoritative and challenging guide to the breadth and depth of critical thinking and theory on obesity. Rather than focusing on obesity as a public health crisis to be solved, this reference work offers divergent and radical strategies alongside biomedical and positivist discourses. Comprised of thirty nine original chapters from internationally recognised academics, as well as emerging scholars, the Handbook engages students, academics, researchers and practitioners in contemporary critical scholarship on obesity; encourages engagement of social science and related disciplines in critical thinking and theorising on obesity; enhances critical theoretical and methodological work in the area, highlighting potential gaps as well as strengths; relates critical scholarship to new and evolving areas of obesity-related practices, policies and research. This multidisciplinary and international collection is designed for a broad audience of academics, researchers, students and practitioners within the social and health sciences, including sociology, obesity science, public health, population health, medicine, public policy, exercise science, sports studies, fat studies, psychology, nutrition science, health promotion, education, and disability studies. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents Lists of figures List of tables List of contributors PART A Introduction 1 The worlds of critical obesity studies PART B History 2 A critical obesidarium (in English) 3 How body size became a disease: a history of the body mass index and its rise to clinical importance 4 Obesity in transition: a challenge in modern history 5 Obesity in Brazil: between liberties and pathologies 6 Middle-aged businessman and social progress: the links between risk factor research and the obesity epidemic 7 Crisis revisited: historical notes on a modern ‘obesity epidemic’ PART C Theory 8 Devil pray: fat studies in an obesity research world 9 Not the medicine needed? Governing fat women’s bodies via exercise prescriptions 10 New materialist enactments 11 Doing fat with post-developmental pedagogies 12 A personal reflection on editing: ‘unmasking’ the critical obesity researcher against itself PART D Food 13 Sweetening the “war on obesity” 14 Obesity and its cures as socio-ecological fixes for agro-food capitalism 15 Encountering ‘healthy’ food in Mexican schools 16 Navigating the ‘norm’ in food experiences and healthy lifestyles of Chinese international students in Australia 17 School food in Australia – a dog’s breakfast? 18 Obesity and the proper meal at workplace: French and English at the table and (or beyond) the culturalist explanation 19 Junk food marketing, childhood obesity, and the production of (un)certainty PART E Bodies 20 (Re)defining language : ‘fat’, ‘overweight’, and ‘obese’ identities 21 Skinny selves in a fat-obsessed world 22 The ubiquity of the experience of being “too fat”: perspectives from young people in Germany 23 A mother of a problem: addressing the gendering of obesity panic 24 Fighting fat in families? 25 Goldilocks Day: opt simal activity mixes in Australian children 26 Fat activism and physical activity 27 Wayfinding obesity within the VA’ of critical beauty PART F Media 28 News reporting on the “obesity epidemic” and how it worsens weight-based stigma 29 The spectacle of obesity in reality makeover shows in Chile 30 The rise of the carnivore diet and the fetishizing of indigenous foodways 31 A study of an anti-obesity, anti-obesity campaign PART G Policies 32 Evidence as a fig leaf: obesity policies and institutional filters in Denmark 33 The metabolic rift between culture and liberalism in obesity interventions and policy 34 A matter of weight? Anti-obesity strategies in Spain 35 New language, old assumptions: the shifting language in British Columbia’s physical and health education curricula 36 The ethics of obesity policy PART H Future directions 37 Frameworks and ideologies for fat non-discrimination rights 38 Changing attitudes: a review and critique of weight stigma intervention research 39 A critique of obesity as a category of malnutrition in all its forms Index