Laura De Pian

Children’s Bodies, Surveillance and the Obesity Crisis

Lyon (2002: 1) suggests that whilst work in the field of surveillance studies is broad and diverse, ‘what they have in common is that, for whatever reason, people and populations are under scrutiny’. Increasing amounts of intervention into people’s lives in a quest to monitor and regulate their diets, health, body size and shape is one way in which people have fallen prey to increasing levels of surveillance in society. As evidenced in previous chapters, the construction of obesity as a ‘health crisis’ has further propagated what Armstrong (1995) refers to as ‘Surveillance Medicine’: Surveillance Medicine requires the dissolution of the distinct clinical categories of healthy and ill as it attempts to bring everyone within its network of visibility. Therefore one of the earliest expressions of Surveillance Medicine — and a vital precondition for its continuing proliferation — was the problematisation of the normal. (Armstrong, 1995: 395)

I move like you... But different:Biopolitics and embodied methodologies

Our aim in this article is to throw light on the complexity of the presence of the researcher’s body in the context of conducting research on and within biopolitical governance. To do so, we present author body-narratives derived from two separatestudies, both of which explore biopolitics and draw on an embodied methodology. These narratives point toward the corporeal contradictions of being located within a culture of reading and critiquing bodies while realizing the presence of our own physicality. We argue that methodological reflection on the connections between bodies within the research field ought to rest high among the list of things shaping the future of work related to biopolitics or we risk the effacement of the body. We articulate this in two key ways. First, we examine the emplacement of the fleshy bodies of researchers and the individuals we encounter. We offer reflections on the complexities of the emplacement of our researcher bodies in time, space, and place, and advance a politics of reflexivity that sheds light on how we experience, make claims, and speak about embodiment and physical culture. Second, as scholars who seek to disrupt biopolitical forces and attempt to transcend political and disciplinary boundaries, we consider the presence of the body in a process of border crossing. Rather than simply considering border crossing as an exchange of ideas, knowledge, and practices; we explore the ways in which the presence of our sometimes “normative” bodies can seemingly complicate and contradict our political agenda.

Physical Cultures of Stigmatisation: Health Policy & Social Class

In recent years, the increasing regulation of peoples health and bodies has been exacerbated by a contemporary ‘obesity discourse’ centred on eating less, exercising more and losing weight. This paper contributes to the growing body of work critically examining this discourse and highlights the way physical activity and health policy directed at ‘tackling’ the obesity ‘crisis’ in the UK articulates numerous powerful discourses that operate to legitimise and privilege certain ways of knowing and usher forth certain desirable forms of embodiment. This has given greater impetus to further define the role of physical activity, sport and physical education as instruments for addressing public health agendas. It is argued that these policies have particular implications for social class through their constitution of (un)healthy and (in)active ‘working class’ bodies. One of the most powerful forms of stigmatisation and discrimination circulating within contemporary health emerges when the social and cultural tensions of social class intersect with obesity discourse and its accompanying imperatives related to physical activity and diet. This raises some important questions about the future of sport and physical activity as it is shaped by the politics of broader health agendas and our position within this terrain as ‘critics’. Consequently, the latter part of the paper offers reflections on the nature and utility of our (and others’) social science critique in the politics of obesity and articulates the need for crossing disciplinary and sectoral borders.

Mediating biopower:health education, social class and subjectivity

In both the mass media and the scholarly literature the role of schools in reducing rates of obesity is seen as self-evident. This belief tends to rest on what may seem commonsense ideas about the time children spend in school and a preference for preventing weight gain rather than trying to reverse it in adulthood. It is also consistent with neoliberal preferences for individual, competitive and privatised inter ventions as opposed to broader public policy responses. The following social policy analysis suggests that there are grounds for doubting the wisdom of these assumptions and offers a more nuanced assessment of them.Just over 25 years ago, a book entitled The Politics of Health Education: Raising the Issues (Rodmell & Watt, 1986) was published in the United Kingdom. It was the fi rst book of its kind and emphasis, and its publication refl ected a marked rise in concern about health education, both its imperatives and practices. It was one of the fi rst books at the time to take up questions related to the politics of health education, and possibly the only one. In the Introduction, the Editors state that the book came into being as a response to their, along with others’, concerns about prevailing individualistic and behaviouristic models of health education. In particular, they suggested that “the extent to which health education is able to challenge inequities in the area of inequalities in health and illness is the basic subject matter of this book” (Rodmell & Watt, 1986, p. 2). The book was but part of a fl urry of scholarship at the time spurred on by what is commonly understood to be the “critical turn”. We will return to discuss the critical turn and its associated hopes and effects, its eruptions and disruptions later in the chapter. Fast-forward 25 years, and we fi nd ourselves writing for a new book, a book that, just like Rodmell and Watt’s, is deeply concerned with the politics of health education and the current state of play (see Part I of this volume).Health Education: Critical perspectives provides a socio-cultural and critical approach to health education. The book draws together international experts in the fields of health and education who deconstruct contemporary discourses and practices, and re-imagine a health education that both connects with young people and offers a way forward in addressing issues of health and wellbeing.Chapters within specifically link academic work on neoliberalism, healthism, risk and the body to wider discourses of health and health education. They challenge current practices and call for a re-thinking of current health programs in education settings. A unique feature of this book is the analyses of health education from both political and applied levels across a range of international contexts.The book is divided into three sections: • the social and political contexts informing health education. • how individual health issues (sexuality, alcohol, mental health, the body and obesity, nutrition) articulate in education in complex ways. • alternative ways to think about health and health education pedagogy.The overall theme of the book offers a perspective that the current approach to health education - promoting a fear of ill health, self-surveillance and individual responsibility - can become a form of health fascism, and we need to be cognisant of this potential and its consequences for young people. The book will be of key interest to academics and researchers exploring the political context of health education.