Material Feminism, Obesity Science and the Limits of Discursive Critique

Body and Society

Volumn 21, Issue 4, 2015, Pages 48-76

  Warin, Megan ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE   (Australia)

Author keywords

embodiment; fetal origins hypothesis; material feminism; obesity; obesity science

Indexed keywords

EID: 84948671134     PISSN: 1357034X     EISSN: 14603632     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1357034X14537320     Document Type: Article

References (120)

1. S.Ahmed (2004) The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
2. S.Ahmed (2008) Open forum imaginary prohibitions: Some preliminary remarks on the founding gestures of the ‘new materialism’. European Journal of Women’s Studies15(1): 23–39.
3. S.Alaimo (2008) Trans-corporeal feminisms and the ethical space of nature. In: S.AlaimoS.Hekman (eds) Material Feminisms. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
4. S.AlaimoS.Hekman (2008) Material Feminisms. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
5. L.Aphramor (2005) Is a weight-centred health framework salutogenic? Some thoughts on unhinging certain dietary ideologies. Social Theory & Health3(4): 315–340.
6. L.AphramorJ.Gingras (2011) Reproducing inequalities: Theories and ethics in dietetics. In: M.Unnithan-KumarS.Tremayne (eds) Fatness and the Maternal Body: Women’s Experiences of Corporeality and the Shaping of Social Policy. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
7. L.AphramorJ.BradyJ.Gingras (2013) Advancing critical dietetics: Theorising health at every size. In: E.AbbottsA.Lavis (eds) Why We Eat, How We Eat: Contemporary Encounters between Foods and Bodies. Farnham: Ashgate.
8. K.Barad (2003) Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs28(3): 801–831.
9. D.Barker (1991) The foetal and infant origins of inequalities in health in Britain. Journal of Public Health Medicine13: 64–68.
10. D.Barker (1998) Mothers, Babies, and Disease in Later Life, 2nd edn. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone.
11. D.Barker (2012) Developmental origins of chronic disease. Public Health126(3): 185–189.
12. D.BarkerM.BarkerT.FlemingM.Lampl (2013) Developmental biology: Support mothers to secure future public health. Nature504: 209–211.
13. L.Birke (1999a) Feminism and the Biological Body. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
14. L.Birke (1999b) Bodies and biology. In: J.PriceM.Shildrick (eds) Feminist Theory and the Body: Reader. New York: Routledge, 42–49.
15. L.Blackman (2010) Bodily integrity. Body & Society16(3): 1–9.
16. N.Boero (2007) All the news that’s fat to print: The American ‘obesity epidemic’ and the media. Qualitative Sociology30(1): 41–60.
17. A.Bombak (2014) The ‘obesity epidemic’: Evolving science, unchanging etiology. Sociology Compass8(5): 509–524.
18. A.Brewis (2011) Obesity: Cultural and Biocultural Perspectives. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
19. D.BroomM.Warin (2011) Gendered and class relations of obesity: Confusing findings, deficient explanations. Australian Feminist Studies26(70): 453–467.
20. J.Butler (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge.
21. J.Butler (1993) Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. London: Routledge.
22. P.Campos (2004) The Obesity Myth. New York: Gotham Books.
23. C.Cooper (1998) Fat and Proud: The Politics of Size. London: The Women’s Press.
24. C.Cooper (2009) Fat activism in ten astonishing, beguiling, inspiring and beautiful episodes. In: C.TomrleyA.Kaloski Naylor (eds) Fat Studies in the UK. York: Raw Nerve Books.
25. C.Cooper (2010) Fat studies: Mapping the field. Sociology Compass4(12): 1020–1034.
26. N.Crossley (2004) Fat is a sociological issue: Obesity rates in late modern, ‘body-conscious’ societies. Social Theory & Health2: 222–253.
27. N.Davis (2009) New materialism and feminism’s anti-biologism. European Journal of Women’s Studies16(1): 67–80.
28. H.De BooJ.Harding (2006) The developmental origins of adult disease (Barker) hypothesis. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology46(1): 4–14.
29. R.Diprose (2002) Corporeal Generosity: On Giving with Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
30. C.EbbelingD.PawlakD.Ludwig (2002) Childhood obesity: Public-health crisis, common sense cure. Lancet360: 473–482.
31. B.Evans (2010) Anticipating fatness: Childhood, affect and the pre-emptive ‘war on obesity’. Transnational Institute of British Geographers35: 21–38.
32. B.EvansR.Colls (2009) Measuring fatness, governing bodies: The spatialities of the Body Mass Index (BMI) in anti-obesity politics. Antipode41(5): 1051–1083.
33. J.EvansE.RichB.DaviesR.Allwood (2008) Education, Disordered Eating and Obesity Discourse: Fat Fabrications. New York: Routledge.
34. S.Franklin (2001) Biologization revisited: Kinship theory in the context of new biologies. In: S.FranklinS.McKinnon (eds) Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
35. S.Franklin (2003) Rethinking nature–culture: Anthropology and the new genetics. Anthropological Theory3(1): 65–85.
36. S.FraserJ.MaherJ.Wright (2010) Between bodies and collectivities: Articulating the action of emotion in obesity epidemic discourse. Social Theory & Health8: 192–209.
37. M.Gard (2009) The cultural politics of critical obesity research. In: J.WrightV.Harwood (eds) Biopolitics and the ‘Obesity Epidemic’: Governing Bodies. New York: Routledge.
38. M.Gard (2011a) Truth, belief and the cultural politics of obesity scholarship and public health policy. Critical Public Health21(1): 37–48.
39. M.Gard (2011b) Between alarmists and sceptics: On the cultural politics of obesity scholarship and public policy. In: K.BellD.McNaughtonA.Salmon (eds) Alcohol, Tobacco and Obesity: Morality, Medicine and the New Public Health. London: Routledge.
40. M.Gard (2013) Disagreement, not misrecognition: A reply to Monaghan. Social Theory & Health11(1): 106–115.
41. M.GardJ.Wright (2001) Managing uncertainty: Obesity discourses and physical education in a risk society. Studies in Philosophy and Education20(6): 535–549.
42. M.GardJ.Wright (2005) The Obesity Epidemic: Science, Morality and Ideology. London: Routledge.
43. E.Grosz (2004) The Nick of Time: Politics, Evolution, and the Untimely. St Leonards: Allen and Unwin.
44. E.Grosz (2005) Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
45. E.Grosz (2008) Darwin and feminism: Preliminary investigations for a possible alliance. In: S.AlaimoS.Hekman (eds) Material Feminisms. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
46. L.Gurrieri (2013) Stocky bodies: Fat visual activism. Fat Studies2(2): 197–209.
47. J.Guthman (2013) Fatuous measures: The artifactual construction of the obesity epidemic. Critical Public Health23(3): 263–273.
48. D.Haraway (1993) The biopolitics of post modern bodies: Determinations of self in immune system discourse. In: S.LindenbaumM.Lock (eds) Knowledge, Power and Practice. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
49. S.Hekman (2008) Constructing the ballast: An ontology for feminism. In: S.AlaimoS.Hekman (eds) Material Feminisms. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
50. D.HolmesS.MurrayA.PerronG.Rail (2006) Deconstructing the evidence-based discourse in health sciences: Truth, power, and fascism. International Journal of Evidence Based Healthcare4(3):180–186.
51. R.Kendrick (2013) Metabolism as strategy: Agency, evolution and biological hinterlands. In: E.AbbottsA.Lavis (eds) Why We Eat, How We Eat: Contemporary Encounters Between Foods and Bodies. Farnham: Ashgate.
52. V.Kirby (1997) Telling Flesh: The Substance of the Corporeal. New York: Routledge.
53. V.Kirby (2008) Natural convers(at)ions: Or, what if culture was really nature all along? In: S.AlaimoS.Hekman (eds) Material Feminisms. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
54. A.Kirkland (2011) The environmental account of obesity: A case for feminist skepticism. SIGNS: Journal of Women in Culture and Society36(2): 463–485.
55. C.Lam (2012) Past the impasse, the (new) material feminisms. Paper presented at the Canadian Political Science Association Conference, University of Alberta, Edmonton, June, available at: http://www.cpsa-acsp.ca/conference-pres-2012.shtml#l(accessed 10 December 2013).
56. H.Landecker (2011) Food as exposure: Nutritional epigenetics and the new metabolism. BioSocieties6(2): 167–194.
57. B.Latour (2004) Why has critique run out of steam?Critical Inquiry30(2): 225–248.
58. D.LawlorN.TimpsonR.Harbord. (2008) Exploring the developmental overnutrition hypothesis using parental–offspring associations and FTO as an instrumental variable. Public Library of Science Medicine5(3): 1–10.
59. T.LeathermanA.Goodman (2005) Coca-colonization of diets in the Yucatan. Social Science &Medicine61: 833–846.
60. D.A.LeonH.O.LithellD.VâgeröI.KoupilováR.MohsenL.Berglund. (1998) Reduced fetal growth rate and increased risk of death from ischaemic heart disease: Cohort study of 15,000 Swedish men and women born 1915–29. British Medical Journal317: 241–245.
61. M.Lock (2013) The epigenome and nature/nurture reunification: A challenge for anthropology. Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness32(4): 291–308.
62. R.Longhurst (2011) Becoming smaller: Autobiographical spaces of weight loss. Antipode44(3): 871–888.
63. A.LucasM.S.FewtrellT.J.Cole (1999) Fetal origins of adult disease – the hypothesis revisited. British Medical Journal319: 245–249.
64. L.MansfieldE.Rich (2013) Public health pedagogy, border crossings and physical activity at every size. Critical Public Health23(3): 356–370.
65. A.Martin (2010a) Your mother’s always with you: Material feminism and fetal maternal microchimerism. Resources for Feminist Research33(3/4): 31–46.
66. A.Martin (2010b) Microchimerism in the mother(land): Blurring the borders of body and nation. Body & Society16(3): 23–50
67. E.Martin (1987) The Woman in the Body. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
68. D.McNaughton (2011) From the womb to the tomb: Obesity and maternal responsibility. Critical Public Health21(2): 179–190.
69. M.McNeil (2010) Post-millennial feminist theory: Encounters with humanism, materialism, critique, nature, biology and Darwin. Journal for Cultural Research14(4): 427–438.
70. T.Moffat (2010) The ‘childhood obesity epidemic’: Health crisis or social construction?Medical Anthropology Quarterly24(1): 1–21.
71. L.MonaghanR.HollandsG.Pritchard (2010) Obesity epidemic entrepreneurs: Types, practices and interests. Body & Society16(2): 37–71.
72. L.MonaghanR.CollsB.Evans (2013) Obesity discourse and fat politics: Research, critique and interventions. Critical Public Health23(3): 249–262.
73. V.MooreM.Davies (2005) Diet during pregnancy, neonatal outcomes and later health. Reproduction, Fertility and Development17(3): 341–348.
74. S.Murray (2005) (Un/be)coming out? Rethinking fat politics. Social Semiotics15(2): 153–163.
75. T.Newton (2007) Nature and Sociology. London: Routledge.
76. E.Oliver (2006) Fat Politics: The Real Story Behind America’s Obesity Epidemic. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
77. S.Orbach (1978) Fat is a Feminist Issue. New York: Paddington Press.
78. G.Pálsson (2008) Genomic anthropology: Coming in from the cold?Current Anthropology49(4): 545–568.
79. A.Paul (2010) How the first nine months shape the rest of your life. Time Magazine, 22 September. Available at: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2020815,00.html(accessed 2 November 2012).
80. E.Probyn (2008) Silences behind the mantra: Critiquing feminist fat. Feminism & Psychology18(3): 401–404.
81. P.Rabinow (1992) Artificiality and enlightenment: From sociobiology to biosociality. In: J.C.Kwinter (ed.) Incorporations. New York: Zone Books.
82. G.RailD.HolmesS.Murray (2010) The politics of evidence on ‘domestic terrorists’: Obesity discourses and their effects. Social Theory & Health8: 259–279.
83. J.W.Rich-EdwardsM.J.StampferJ.E.MansonB.RosnerS.E.HankinsonG.A.Colditz. (1997) Birth weight and risk of cardiovascular disease in a cohort of women followed up since 1976. British Medical Journal315: 396–400.
84. N.Rose (2006) The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-first Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
85. B.Ross (2005) Fat or fiction: Weighing the obesity epidemic. In: M.GardJ.Wright (eds) The Obesity Epidemic: Science, Morality and Ideology. London: Routledge.
86. E.RothblumS.Solovay (2009) The Fat Studies Reader. New York: New York University Press.
87. A.SaguyK.Riley (2005) Weighing both sides: Morality, mortality, and framing contests over obesity. Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law30: 869–923.
88. E.Sedgwick (2003) Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
89. M.Shildrick (2010) Some reflections on the socio-cultural and bioscientific limits of bodily integrity. Body & Society16(3): 11–22.
90. C.Shilling (2003 [1993]) The Body and Social Theory. London: Sage.
91. C.Shilling (2005) Body in Culture, Technology and Society. London: Sage.
92. S.SquierM.Littlefield (2004) Feminist theory and/of science. Feminist Theory5(2): 123–126.
93. M.Strathern (1992) After Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
94. M.SusserB.Levin (1999) Ordeals for the fetal programming hypothesis. British Medical Journal318: 885–886.
95. K.ThrosbyD.Gimlin (2010) Critiquing thinness and wanting to be thin. In: R.Ryan-FloodR.Gill (eds) Secrecy and Silence in the Research Process: Feminist Reflections. London: Routledge.
96. N.Tuana (1996) Fleshing gender, sexing the body: Reconfiguring the sex/gender distinction. Southern Journal of Philosophy35: 53–71.
97. N.Tuana (2008) Viscous porosity: Witnessing Katrina. In: S.AlaimoS.Hekman (eds) Material Feminisms. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
98. B.TurnerC.Rojek (2001) Society and Culture: Principles of Scarcity and Solidarity. London: Sage.
99. S.UlijaszekH.Lofink (2006) Obesity in biocultural perspective. Annual Review of Anthropology35: 337–360.
100. M.Unnithan-Kumar (2011) Introduction – Corporeality and reproduction: Understanding fatness through the diverse experiences of motherhood, consumption and social regulation. In: M.Unnithan-KumarS.Tremayne (eds) Fatness and the Maternal Body: Women's Experiences of Corporeality and the Shaping of Social Policy. Oxford: Berghan Books.
101. M.Unnithan-KumarS.Tremayne (eds) (2011) Fatness and the Maternal Body: Women's Experiences of Corporeality and the Shaping of Social Policy. Oxford: Berghan Books.
102. I.Varela-SilvaH.AzcorraF.FickinsonB.BoginA.R.Frisancho (2009) Influence of maternal stature, pregnancy age, and infant birth weight on growth during childhood in Yucatan, Mexico: A test of the intergenerational effects hypothesis. American Journal of Human Biology21: 657–663.
103. M.Wann (2009) Fat studies: An invitation to revolution. In: E.RothblumS.Solovay (eds) The Fat Studies Reader. New York: New York University Press.
104. M.WarinK.TurnerV.MooreM.Davies (2008) Bodies, mothers and identities: Rethinking obesity and the BMI. Sociology of Health & Illness30(1): 97–111.
105. M.WarinV.MooreT.ZivkovicM.Davies (2011a) Telescoping the origins of obesity to women’s bodies: How gender inequalities are being squeezed out of Barker’s hypothesis. Annals of Human Biology38(4): 453–460.
106. M.WarinV.MooreM.Davies (2011b) The traffic in ‘nature’: Maternal bodies and obesity. In: M.Unnithan-KumarS.Tremayne (eds) Fatness and the Maternal Body: Women’s Experiences of Corporeality and the Shaping of Social Policy. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
107. M.WarinT.ZivkovicM.DaviesV.Moore (2012) Mothers as smoking guns: Fetal overnutrition and the reproduction of obesity. Feminism & Psychology22(3, Special issue on Fat Embodiment): 360–375.
108. J.Wells (2007) The thrifty phenotype as an adaptive maternal effect. Biological Reviews82(1): 143–172.
109. J.Wells (2009) The Evolutionary Biology of Human Body Fatness: Thrift and Control. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
110. J.WellsA.MarphatiaT.ColeD.McCoy (2012) Associations of economic and gender inequality with global obesity prevalence: Understanding the female excess. Social Science & Medicine75(3): 482– 490.
111. S.WilliamsL.BirkeG.Bendelow (2003) Debating Biology: Sociological Reflections on Health, Medicine and Society. London: Routledge.
112. E.Wilson (1998) Neural Geographies: Feminism and the Microstructure of Cognition. New York: Routledge.
113. E.Wilson (2004a) Gut feminism. Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies15(3): 66–94.
114. E.Wilson (2004b) Psychosomatic: Feminism and the Neurological Body. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
115. E.Wilson (2008) Organic empathy: Feminism, psychopharmaceuticals, and the embodiment of depression. In: S.AlaimoS.Hekman (eds) Material Feminisms. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
116. J.WrightV.Harwood (2009) Biopolitics and the ‘Obesity Epidemic’: Governing Bodies. New York: Routledge.
117. E.Yates-Doerr (2011) Bodily betrayal: Love and anger in the time of epigenetics. In: F.Mascia Lees (ed.) A Companion to the Anthropology of the Body and Embodiment. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 292–306.
118. E.Yates-Doerr (2014) Obesity science and health translations in Guatemala. Anthropology Now6(1): 3–14.
119. R.Yoshizawa (2012) The Barker hypothesis and obesity: Connections for transdiciplinarity and social justice. Social Theory & Health10(4): 348–367.
120. T.ZivkovicM.WarinM.DaviesM.Moore (2010) In the name of the child: The gendered politics of childhood obesity. Journal of Sociology46: 375–392.