Obesity in Canada: Critical Perspectives
© 2016
Medical professionals, social policy makers, and the media have all declared that Canada is in the grip of an obesity epidemic. Conceptualizing obesity as a biological condition, these experts insist that it needs to be “prevented” and “managed.”
Obesity in Canada takes a broader, critical perspective of our supposed epidemic. Examining obesity in its cultural and historical context, the book’s contributors ask how we measure health and wellness, where our attitudes to obesity develop from, and what the consequences are of naming and targeting as “obese” those whose body weights do not match our expectations. A broad survey of the issues surrounding the obesity panic in Canada, it is the first collection of fat studies and critical obesity studies from a distinctly Canadian perspective.
Product Details
- World Rights
- Page Count: 496 pages
- Illustrations: 6
- Dimensions: 6.0in x 1.2in x 9.0in
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Reviews
"Obesity in Canada is a welcome, and much needed, addition to the study of the fat body as a cultural, social, political, historical, and representational artefact…[The editors] offer, as a whole, a powerful "interruption" into more usual ways of thinking about fat and obesity in Canada and elsewhere."
Ann Braithwaite
CBMH Vol 34:2: 2016"This book is excellent! The text combines an impressive collection of work that highlights the intersection of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality and socio-economic perspectives in our discussion about obesity. The scholarship is current and makes unique contributions to the field of fat studies."
Esther D. Rothblum, Professor of Women’s Studies, San Diego State University"This is an interesting and often provocative collection that remedies large gaps in the scholarly literature. I know of no other book that focuses on obesity in the Canadian context in a critical fashion."
Katie LeBesco, Associate Dean, Marymount Manhattan College -
Author Information
Jenny Ellison is the Curator of Sport and Leisure at the Canadian Museum of History, and co-editor of Obesity in Canada: Critical Perspectives, also published by University of Toronto Press.Deborah McPhail is an assistant professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences in the Max Rady College of Medicine at the University of Manitoba
Wendy Mitchinson is a Canadian historian and a Distinguished Professor Emerita in University of Waterloo. -
Table of contents
Introduction: Obesity in Canada by Jenny Ellison, Deborah McPhail and Wendy Mitchinson
Part One: Critical Perspectives on Obesity Science
1. Hearing Noises and Noticing Silence: Towards a Critical Engagement with Canadian Body Weight Statistics by Michael Gard
2. “Obesity” as Process: The Medicalization of Fatness by Canadian Researchers, 1971-2010 by Elise Paradis
3. The Geneticization of Aboriginal Diabetes and Obesity: Adding Another Scene to the Story of the Thrifty Gene by Jennifer Poudrier
4. Diabesity or the “Twin Epidemics”: Reflections on the Iatrogenic Consequences of Stigmatizing Lifestyle to Reduce the Incidence of Diabetes Mellitus in Canada by Darlene McNaughton and Cynthia Smith
5. Spoon Fed: Learning about “Obesity” in Dietetics by Julie E. Rochefort, Andrea Senchuk, Jennifer Brady and Jacqui Gingras
6. Aboriginal People’s Clinical Encounters with Obesity: A Conversation with Barry Interview by Deborah McPhail
Part Two: Who is Responsible for Obesity?
7. Mother Blaming and Obesity: An Alternative Perspective by Wendy Mitchinson
8. Obesity, Risk, and Responsibility: The Discursive Production of the “Ultimate At-Risk Child” by Pamela Ward
9. Obesity Panic, Body Surveillance, and Pedagogy: Elementary Teachers’ Response to “Obesity Messaging” by LeAnne Petherick and Natalie Beausoleil
10. Find Your Greatness: Responsibility, Policy and the Problem of Childhood Obesity by Charlene Elliott
Part Three: Representations Of, and Responses To, Obesity
11. From “FU” to “Be Yourself”: Fat Activisms in Canada by Jenny Ellison
12. Having Your Jiggs Dinner and Eating It, Too: Newfoundland Obesity and the Affects of Tradition by Deborah McPhail
13. Screening the Un-Scene: Deconstructing the (Bio)politics of Story Telling in a Canadian Reality Makeover Weight Loss Series by Moss E. Norman, Geneviève Rail and Shannon Jette
14. Fat Authenticity and the Pursuit of Hetero-Romantic Love in Vancouver: The Case of Online Dating by Jacqueline Schoemaker Holmes
Part Four: Inconclusions
15. “Celebrating Unruly Experiences”: Queering Health at Every Size as a Response to the Politics of Postponement by Jennifer Brady and Jacqui Gingras
16. Re-Visioning Fat: From Enforcing Norms to Exploring Possibilities Unique to Different Bodies by Carla Rice
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Prizes
WGSRF Outstanding Scholarship Prize
- Commended in 2018 -
Subjects and Courses
