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The “Childhood Obesity Epidemic”:
Author(s) -
Moffat Tina
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
medical anthropology quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.855
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1548-1387
pISSN - 0745-5194
DOI - 10.1111/j.1548-1387.2010.01082.x
Subject(s) - reflexivity , poverty , phenomenon , postmodernism , sociology , social science , environmental ethics , political science , epistemology , law , philosophy
There has been a meteoric rise over the past two decades in the medical research and media coverage of the so‐called global childhood obesity epidemic. Recently, in response to this phenomenon, there has been a spate of books and articles in the fields of critical sociology and cultural studies that have argued that this “epidemic” is socially constructed, what Natalie Boero (2007) dubs a “postmodern epidemic.” As an anthropologist who has studied child nutrition and obesity in relation to poverty and the school environment, I am concerned about both the lack of reflexivity among medical researchers as well as critical scholars’ treatment of the problem as entirely socially constructed. In this article I present both sides of this debate and then discuss how we can attempt to navigate a middle course that recognizes this health issue but also offers alternative approaches to those set by the biomedical agenda.