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‘Gluttony or sloth’: critical geographies of bodies and morality in (anti)obesity policy
Author(s) -
Evans Bethan
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
area
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.958
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1475-4762
pISSN - 0004-0894
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-4762.2006.00692.x
Subject(s) - medicalization , morality , critical reading , relevance (law) , political science , sociology , public policy , obesity , perspective (graphical) , public health , public health policy , environmental ethics , reading (process) , health policy , law , medicine , philosophy , nursing , artificial intelligence , psychiatry , computer science , health care
In many countries, obesity is high on public health policy agendas, and geographical research has begun to engage with obesity. However, obesity is a highly contested term, and recent debates about geographers’ engagement with policy, and critical discussions of the presence of bodies in medical geography, bear great relevance for developing a critical perspective on dominant ‘obesity discourse’. Through a critical reading of a recent UK policy document, this paper considers the presence of bodies in (anti)obesity campaigns, calling for a more critical approach to the medicalization of body size to be central to future geographical work on obesity.