Enacting knowledge, power, and equity: understanding the public appetite for preventive obesity regulations
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Date
2018
Authors
Farrell, Lucy Claire
Editors
Advisors
Street, Jacqueline Mary
Moore, Vivienne Marie
Warin, Megan Jane
Moore, Vivienne Marie
Warin, Megan Jane
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Theses
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Abstract
This thesis critically examines public views about the use of preventive obesity
regulations in Australia. An extensive body of social science scholarship has
demonstrated that the dominant neoliberal ideology of healthism has engendered
anxiety in the public imagination about the obesity epidemic, as well as
perpetuating an intensely moral discourse of personal responsibility for obesity.
How public support for regulatory interventions is generated in this ideological
and emotionally-charged climate has not yet been established.
This is important in the context of increasing calls from public health advocates
for regulatory interventions to address obesity and attenuate the disproportionate
burden on those of lower socio-economic circumstances. As regulations are
controversial in the prevailing neoliberal political context, public support is
wielded by advocates as valuable political currency.
A mixed-methods research program within a critical public health framework was
undertaken to examine public views. First, the role of emotions in shaping the
discourses that underpin public views were examined through an affective-discursive
analysis of comments attached to online news articles about preventive
obesity regulations. Focus groups were then conducted to identify how dominant
ideological and discursive framings of regulations reflect the experiences of
disparate socio-economic groups, which are differentially configured as ‘at risk’ of
obesity in public health scholarship. Finally, a representative cross-sectional survey
was conducted to ascertain levels of support for specific regulations, and to
interrogate socio-demographic variations in views.
Extending Wright and Harwood’s (2009) concept of biopedagogy, I argue that in
the prevailing neoliberal context obesity is widely read as a morally reprehensible
embodiment of ignorance. As such, broad public support for preventive obesity
regulations is generated through the capacity of these measures to correct
perceived knowledge deficits and to institute moral culpability. My findings
demonstrate that public support for regulations is enmeshed with classed and
gendered norms that actively (re)produce ignorance as the cause of obesity, by
legitimising and privileging certain lifestyles and forms of knowledge.
Key to my argument is the ways in which neoliberalism and healthism have
created an environment in which ‘the public’ as a collective body are positioned as
victims of the obesity epidemic. I show how this collectivisation, in concert with
expert public health knowledges which locate the obesity problem in the
problematised behaviours of those from low socio-economic conditions,
engenders support for interventions which incite people to behave in ways that
align with distinctly classed and gendered imperatives around body weight and
diet. Through a critical examination of public views, this thesis provides new knowledge
about how preventive obesity regulations extend the responsibilisation and
moralisation of individuals in relation to obesity. I argue that the deployment of
claims of public support for regulations in public health advocacy is contingent
upon a constellation of knowledge/ignorance/power that precludes the insights of
those from low socio-economic conditions from obesity policy development. This
forecloses consideration of possibilities for effective and equitable resolution to the
obesity problem, and thereby undermines the emancipatory potential of
preventive obesity regulations.
School/Discipline
School of Population Health : Public Health
Dissertation Note
Thesis (Ph.D.) (Research by Publication) -- University of Adelaide, School of Public Health, 2018
Provenance
This electronic version is made publicly available by the University of Adelaide in accordance with its open access policy for student theses. Copyright in this thesis remains with the author. This thesis may incorporate third party material which has been used by the author pursuant to Fair Dealing exceptions. If you are the owner of any included third party copyright material you wish to be removed from this electronic version, please complete the take down form located at: http://www.adelaide.edu.au/legals