Obesity is a rising global health problem. On the one hand a clearly defined medical condition, it is at the same time a corporeal state embedded in the social and cultural perception of fatness, body shape and size. Focusing specifically on the maternal body, contributors to the volume examine how the language and notions of obesity connect with, or stand apart from, wider societal values and moralities to do with the body, fatness, reproduction and what is considered ‘natural’. A focus on fatness in the context of human reproduction and motherhood offers instructive insights into the global circulation and authority of biomedical facts on fatness (as ‘risky’ anti-fit, for example). As with other social and cultural studies critical of health policy discourse, this volume challenges the spontaneous connection being made in scientific and popular understanding between fatness and ill health.
表中的内容
List of Figures
List of Tables
Preface
Chapter 1. Introduction: Corporeality and Reproduction: Understanding Fatness through the Diverse Experiences of Motherhood, Consumption and Social Regulation
Maya Unnithan-Kumar
Chapter 2. The Traffic in ‘Nature’: Maternal Bodies and Obesity
Megan Warin, Vivienne Moore and Michael Davies
Chapter 3. Fat and Fertility, Mobility and Slaves: Long-term Perspectives on Tuareg Obesity and Reproduction
Sara Randall
Chapter 4. Women of Great Weight: Fatness, Reproduction and Gender Dynamics in Tuareg Society
Saskia Walentowitz
Chapter 5. Childbearing, Breast-feeding and Body Weight in Tanzania: Three Bodies, Three Individuals, Many Different Interrelations among the Wagogo (Central Tanzania)
Mara Mabilia
Chapter 6. The ‘Obesity Cycle’: The Impact of Maternal Obesity on the Exogenous and Endogenous Causes of Obesity in Offspring in the United Kingdom
Nicola Heslehurst
Chapter 7. Culture, Diet and the Maternal Body: Ghanaian Women’s Perspectives on Food, Fat and Childbearing
Ama de-Graft Aikins
Chapter 8. Unhealthy, Unwealthy, Unwise: Social Policy and Nutritional Education in a Disadvantaged Community in Ireland
Shauna Clarke
Chapter 9. The Maharaja Mac: Changing Dietary Patterns in India
Devi Sridhar
Chapter 10. Is there a Relation between Fatness and Reproductive Health? A Study on Body Mass Index and Reproductive Health of Indian Women
Aravinda Meera Guntupalli
Chapter 11. Reproducing Inequalities: Theories and Ethics in Dietetics
Lucy Aphramor and Jacqui Gingras
Notes on Contributors
Index
关于作者
Soraya Tremayne is a social anthropologist and the Founding Director of the Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group and a Research Associate at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford. For the past twelve years, she has carried out research on reproduction and sexuality in Iran. Her current research focuses on assisted reproductive technologies and Islam in Iran.