Abstract
In the UK over recent years, the issue of childhood obesity has dominated the public health agenda with a proliferation of government policies and initiatives aimed at stemming the year-on-year increase in childhood obesity and overweight. Underpinning much of these efforts is an approach which centres on modifying the lifestyles of individuals and which has been widely critiqued by academics for some time (Crawford 1986, Naidoo 1986, Rodmell and Watt 1986, Kickbusch 1989, Colquhoun and Robottom 1990). Attempts at lifestyle modification are regarded as explicitly rooted in a victim-blaming ethos, accompanied by a moral evangelism which demonises those whose bodies fail to conform to expected norms (Evans 2006, Leahy 2009). Conversely, health promotion literature has stressed the role that structural factors, such as the environment, play in contributing to health outcomes (Naidoo 1986, Dahlgren and Whitehead 1991). Health geographers have also extended their analysis beyond the immediate environment to explore the ways in which space relates to embodied experiences of health and illness (Parr and Butler 1999, Moss and Dyck 2002). Others have proposed the concept of the ‘obesogenic’ environment to explore the effects of the physical environment on children’s bodies (Egger and Swinburn 1997, Lake and Townsend 2006).
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Aitken, S. C. (1994) Putting Children in Their Place (Washington, DC: Association of American Geographers).
Blanchflower, D. G., Oswald, A. J. and Landeghem, B. van (2008) Imitative Obesity Relative Utility. Paper given at NBER Summer Institute on Health Economics. www2.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/faculty/Oswald/ao23julyobesity08.pdf, accessed 8 June 2009.
Butland, B. et al. (2007) Foresight Tackling Obesities: Future Choices Project Report (London: HMSO).
Campos, P. (2004) The Obesity Myth: Why America’s Obsession with Weight is Hazardous to your Health (New York: Gotham Books).
Christakis, N. (2007) ‘The spread of obesity in large social networks over 32 years’, New England Journal of Medicine 357.
Cole, T. (2007) ‘The truth about obesity’, The Investigation, BBC Radio 4, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7105630.stm, accessed 3 March 2009.
Colls, R. and Evans, B. (2007) ‘Embodying responsibility: children’s health and supermarket initiatives’, Environment and Planning A, 40(3), 615–31.
Colquhoun, D. and Robottom, I. (1990) ‘Health education and environmental education: towards a shared agenda and a shared discourse’, Unicorn 16(2), 109–18.
Courtenay Botterill, L. (2006) ‘Leaps of faith in the obesity debate: a cautionary tale for policy makers’, The Political Quarterly 77(1): 199–203.
Crawford, R. (1986) ‘A cultural account of “health”, control, release and the social body’, in J. B. McKinlay (ed.) Issues in the Political Economy of Health Care (London: Tavistock).
Dahlgren, G. and Whitehead, M. (1991) Policies and Strategies to Promote Social Equity in Health (Stockholm: Institute of Fiscal Studies).
Egger, G. and Swinburn, B. (1997) ‘An “ecological” approach to the obesity pandemic’, British Medical Journal 315: 477–80.
Evans, B. (2004) ‘Be fit not fat: broadening the childhood obesity debate beyond dualisms’, Children’s Geographies 2(2): 288–91.
Evans, B. (2006) ‘Gluttony or sloth? Critical geographies of bodies and morality in (anti)obesity policy’, Area 38(3): 259–67.
Flegal, K. M., Tabak, C. J. and Ogden, C. L. (2006) ‘Overweight in children: definitions and interpretation’, Health Education Research Theory and Practice 21: 755–60.
Food Standards Agency (2007,) Eat Well Plate, available at www.eatwell.gov.uk/healthydiet/eatwellplate, accessed 3 February 2009.
Gard, J. and Wright, M. (2005) The Obesity Epidemic: Science, Morality and Ideology (London: Routledge).
Holloway, S. and Valentine, G. (2000) ‘Spatiality and the new social studies of childhood’, Sociology 34(4): 763–83.
James, A., Jenks, C. and Prout, A. (1998) Theorizing Childhood (Cambridge: Polity Press).
Kickbusch, I. (1989) ‘Self care in health promotion’, Social Science and Medicine, 22(2): 125–30.
Lake, A. and Townsend, T. (2006) ‘Obesogenic environments: exploring the built and food environments’, Journal of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health, 126(6): 262–7.
Leahy, D. (2009) ‘Disgusting pedagogies’, in J. Wright and V. Harwood (eds) Biopolitics and the Obesity Epidemic (New York: Routledge).
Lupton, D. (1996) Food, Body and the Self (London: Sage).
Morrow, V. (1999, 2005) ‘Conceptualising social capital in relation to the well-being of children and young people: a critical review’, The Sociological Review, 47(4): 744–65.
Moss, P. and Dyck, I. (2002) Women, Body, Illness: Space and Identity in the Everyday Lives of Women with Chronic Illness (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield).
Naidoo, J. (1986) ‘Limits to individualism’, in S. Rodmell and A. Watt (eds) The Politics of Health Education (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul), pp. 17–37.
Naidoo, J. and Wills, J. (2000) Health Promotion: Foundations for Practice (Edinburgh: Baillière Tindall).
Parr, H. and Butler, R. (1999) ‘New geographies of illness, impairment and disability’, in R. Butler and H. Parr (eds) Mind and Body Spaces: Geographies of Illness, Impairment and Disability (London: Routledge), pp. 1–24.
PAU Education (2008) Shape Up Stories (Barcelona: PAU Education), available at www.shapeupeurope.net/files/media/media407.pdf, accessed 3 February 2009.
Pawson, R. and Tilley, N. (1997) Realistic Evaluation (London: Sage).
Pike, J. and Colquhoun, D. (2007) ‘Beyond the School Gates: School Food and Parenting Practice’. Oral presentation, University of Queensland, Australia.
Popay, J., Williams, G., Thomas, C. and Gatrell, A. (1998) ‘Theorising inequalities in health: the place of lay knowledge’, Sociology of Health And Illness 20(5): 619–44.
Procter, K. L., Clarke, G. P., Ransley, J. K. and Cade, J. (2008) ‘Micro-level analysis of childhood obesity, diet, physical activity, residential socioeconomic and social capital variables: where are the obesogenic environments in Leeds?’ Area 40(3): 323–40.
Rodmell, S. and Watt, A. (1986) The Politics of Health Education (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul).
Ross, B. (2005) ‘Fat or fiction: weighing the obesity epidemic’, in M. Gard and J. Wright (eds) The Obesity Epidemic: Science, Morality and Ideology (London: Routledge).
Rudolph, M. C. J. (2006) ‘Watch it! An NHS community service for obese children’, Cambridge Medicine 20(1): 8–10.
Simovska V. et al. (2006) Towards a Healthy and Balanced Growing Up: Shape Up Methdological Guidebook (Barcelona: PAU Education).
Thompson, S. (2005) ‘“Territorialising” the primary school playground: deconstructing the geography of playtime’, Children’s Geographies 3(1): 63–78.
Wenzel, E. (1997) ‘A comment on settings in health promotion’, Internet Journal of Health Promotion, available at www.rhpeo.org/ijhp-articles/1997/1/index.htm.
World Health Organisation, Ottawa Charter (1986), available at www.who.int/hpr/NPH/docs/ottawa_charter_hp.pdf, accessed 3 February 2009.
Zola, I. K. (1978) ‘Medicine as an institution of social control’, in J. Ehrenreich, The Cultural Crisis of Modern Medicine (New York: Monthly Review Press).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2010 Jo Pike and Derek Colquhoun
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Pike, J., Colquhoun, D. (2010). Embodied Childhood in the Health-promoting School. In: Hörschelmann, K., Colls, R. (eds) Contested Bodies of Childhood and Youth. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230274747_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230274747_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-29950-8
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-27474-7
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social Sciences CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)