Article ID: CBB682658212

Weighing on us all? Quantification and cultural responses to obesity in NHS Britain (2020)

unapi

How do cultures of self-quantification intersect with the modern state, particularly in relation to medical provision and health promotion? Here I explore the ways in which British practices and representations of body weight and weight management ignored or interacted with the National Health Service between 1948 and 2004. Through the lens of overweight, I examine health citizenship in the context of universal health provision funded from general taxation, and track attitudes toward “overweight” once its health implications and medical costs affected a public service as well as individual bodies and households. Looking at professional and popular discourses of overweight and obesity, I map the persistence of a highly individual culture of dietary and weight self-management in postwar Britain, and assess the degree to which it was challenged by a new measure of “obesity” – the body mass index – and by visions of an NHS burdened and even threatened by the increasing overweight of the citizens it was created to serve.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB682658212/

Similar Citations

Book Katerina Sideri; (2016)
Bioproperty, Biomedicine and Deliberative Governance: Patents as Discourse on Life (/isis/citation/CBB016823973/)

Article Stephen M. Davies; (2021)
Priorities in Medical Research: Elite dynamics in a pivotal episode for British health research (/isis/citation/CBB399620799/)

Article Elise Smith; (2020)
“Why do we measure mankind?” Marketing anthropometry in late-Victorian Britain (/isis/citation/CBB717605789/)

Article Nikos Karfakis; (2018)
The biopolitics of CFS/ME (/isis/citation/CBB349225966/)

Thesis Tess Lanzarotta; (2018)
Unsettling Biomedicine: Research, Care, and Indigenous Rights in Cold War Alaska (/isis/citation/CBB670049791/)

Article Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Ina; (2005)
The Culture of the Abdomen: Obesity and Reducing in Britain, circa 1900-1939 (/isis/citation/CBB000660023/)

Book Chen, Mel Y.; (2012)
Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect (/isis/citation/CBB001551359/)

Article Offer, Avner; (2001)
Body Weight and Self-Control in the United States and Britain since the 1950s (/isis/citation/CBB000770462/)

Book Nicklaus Thomas-Symonds; (2015)
Nye: The Political Life of Aneurin Bevan (/isis/citation/CBB620201368/)

Article Patrick Brown; Ferhana Hashem; Michael Calnan; (2016)
Trust, Regulatory Processes and Nice Decision-making: Appraising Cost-Effectiveness Models Through Appraising People and Systems (/isis/citation/CBB670547165/)

Book Jennifer Crane; Jane Hand; (2022)
Posters, Protests, and Prescriptions: Cultural Histories of the National Health Service in Britain (/isis/citation/CBB466847015/)

Book Loudon, Irvine; Horder, John; Webster, Charles; (1998)
General Practice under the National Health Service 1948--1997 (/isis/citation/CBB000630997/)

Authors & Contributors
Davies, Stephen M.
Sideri, Katerina
Begley, Philip
Fiorilli, Olivia
Michael Calnan
Nicklaus Thomas-Symonds
Concepts
Biopolitics
Weight management
Biomedicine
Medicine and government
Health
Public health
Time Periods
20th century, late
21st century
20th century
20th century, early
19th century
Places
Great Britain
United States
Wales
Italy
France
Alaska (U.S.)
Institutions
National Health Service (Great Britain)
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment