Debating Individual Agency

Abstract

I focus on the pair of narratives which constitute the primary public debate, in that they are the most prominent accounts with the largest backing. I show that the contest to understand the issue of obesity here is not a simple one of ‘structure versus agency’ or ‘environment versus behaviour’; instead, it is a more complex contest between narratives which mobilise features across the broader discourses associated with the ‘environmental’ and the ‘behavioural’. The dominant narrative underpinning policy in both countries—Facilitated Agency—sees obesity as a problem caused largely by broad environmental factors, but promotes the most elegant and feasible solution as working to better enable individuals to manage their own weight. Structured Opportunity, the primary counternarrative voiced by public health experts and activists, accepts that behavioural explanations of the obesity epidemic must be ‘part of the mix’, but it nevertheless sees the major policy gains to be had at a population level in regulating the food environment. Both, ultimately, claim to advocate making ‘healthy choices easier’ in the contest for the middle ground; the broader lesson being that performing political narratives in practice represents less a perfect or pure manifestation of a distinct discourse, and more an effort to ‘bridge’ distinct discourses in order to better mobilise broader support.