The Environmental Account of Obesity
A Case for Feminist Skepticism
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2221985 |
|---|---|
| Authors | A Kirkland (0000-0001-5711-4074, University of Michigan, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 36 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 463-485 |
| Publication date | 2011-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0097-9740 • E-ISSN: 1545-6943 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/655916 |
| PMID | 21114084 |
| OpenAlex | W2173299324 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 52 |
| References cited | 37 |
There is an emerging consensus among public health advocates that combating obesity is best done by restructuring the environment rather than by stigmatizing individuals. Although feminist scholars have not been major participants in debates over antiobesity policy, recently there has been a move toward adopting the environmental account of obesity as a feminist solution because of its potential to respond to health inequalities along race, class, and gender lines. This article aims to trouble the embrace of the environmental approach by feminist scholars, however, and to resurrect and redirect feminist criticism toward attendant problems of moralism, backlash, and the surveillance and rehabilitation of poor women of color. Despite its overwhelming popularity among policy elites and health researchers, I argue that the environmental account of obesity is not likely to promote structural change and broad redistributions. Rather it makes problematic assumptions about the relationship between health and fat and about the efficacy of intervention strategies, masks moralism with health discourse, and legitimizes punitive, ineffective, and patronizing interventions
Criminology · Criticism · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Intervention (counseling) · Morality · Political science · Popularity · Punitive damages · Race (biology) · Skepticism · Sociology · Diversity and Impact of Dance · Gender Studies · Law · Obesity and Health Practices · Obesity, Physical Activity, Diet · Psychology
We’re kind of devolving’
Risky Measures
Barriers to and Facilitators of Stocking Healthy Food Options
Doing Justice to Bodies? Reflections on Food Justice, Race, and Biology
Fat Studies
“Two quid, chicken and chips, done”
Addressing the complexity of equitable care for larger patients
The color of fat
Researching Transgression
Fox's More to Love
The “Obesity Epidemic”
Pure, white and deadly
Everybody watches and everybody comments”
From science to sensational headline
Fat knowledges and matters of fat
The pariah femininity hierarchy
The Embodiment of Contempt
What difference does income make for Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) members in California? Comparing lower-income and higher-income households
Examining the more-than-built environments of a northern Manitoban community
Fatness, Fitness, and Feminism in the Built Environment
Why Fat is a Feminist Issue
Making space for fat bodies
Meghan Markle's healthy lifestyle in the media
Nutritional Epidemiology of Chronic Disease and Defining “Healthy Diet”
Doing Justice to Bodies? Reflections on Food Justice, Race, and Biology
Dead to the World
Latch On or Back Off? Public Health, Choice, and the Ethics of Breast-Feeding Promotion Campaigns
The Gut Microbiome and the Imperative of Normalcy
Encountering fat others, embodying the thin self
Junk
Obesity discourse and fat politics
Foodways of the urban poor
Towards an embodied political ecology of fat masculinities
Sweets are ‘my best friend’
At the Intersection of Public Health and Fat Studies
Fat in food & environment justice
Mitochondrial mothers of a fat nation
Bombak Responds
Obesity, Health at Every Size, and Public Health Policy
Feminism and the Complexities of Gender and Health
On the limitations of barriers
Socio-economic divergence in public opinions about preventive obesity regulations
Picturing obesity
Public health in the making
Phantom/liminal fat and feminist theories of the body
Climate change and the politics of fatness
Body Talk and Boundary Work Among Arab Canadian Immigrant Women
Food Ethics II
Self-tracking in the Digital Era
Material Feminism, Obesity Science and the Limits of Discursive Critique
Reconceptualising Judith Butler's theory of 'grievability' in relation to the UK's 'war on obesity
Life Lessons
Fat history
Food Politics
Weighing Both Sides
Obesity. Halting the obesity epidemic
High Body Mass Index for Age Among US Children and Adolescents, 2003-2006
Excess Deaths Associated With Underweight, Overweight, and Obesity
The Obese Without Cardiometabolic Risk Factor Clustering and the Normal Weight With Cardiometabolic Risk Factor Clustering
The epidemiology of overweight and obesity
Environmental Contributions to the Obesity Epidemic
Eight Americas
Body images and obesity risk among Black females
The vulnerable subject
A Black Feminist Reflection on the Antiviolence Movement
Obesity at the Crossroads
IV. Silences Behind the Mantra
Commentary on teaching food
Fat in the Fire? Science, the News Media, and the “Obesity Epidemic” 2
Shattered Bonds
The Cairo Conference on Population and Development
American Nightmare
The obesity epidemic
Fat Rights
Embodying Neoliberalism
Hijacking Global Feminism
Fast food/organic food
Slow Death (Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency)
Feminist Disability Studies
| Unique citing works | 52 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 3,47 |
| Citation span | 2011 - 2023 (13) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 49 |