Fatness and the Maternal Body

Women's Experiences of Corporeality and the Shaping of Social Policy

248 Seiten, Hardcover

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

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.

• Reihe: Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality: Social and Cultural Perspectives
• Themen: Gesellschaft und Sozialwissenschaften Gesellschaft und Kultur, allgemein Gesellschaftliche Gruppen, Gemeinschaften und Identitäten Gruppen Frauen und Mädchen
• ISBN: 9780857451224
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 15.07.2011
• Größe: 235 x 157 mm
• Verlag: Berghahn Books
• Herausgegeben von: Maya Unnithan-Kumar, Soraya Tremayne