Overview

The average size of human bodies all over the world has been steadily rising over recent decades. The total count of people clinically labeled “obese” is now at least three times what it was in 1980. Fat Planet represents a collaborative effort to consider at a global scale what fat stigma is and what it does to people. Making use of an array of social science perspectives applied in multiple settings, the authors examine the interplay of weight, wealth, history, culture, and meaning to fat and its social rejection. They explore the notion of symbolic body capital—the power of non-fat bodies to do what people need or want. In so doing, they illustrate the complex and quickly shifting dynamics in thinking about fat—often considered personal yet powerfully influenced by and influential upon the broader world in which we live.

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9780826358004

Table of Contents

Reviews

A valuable contribution to both the anthropology of obesity and body capital theory. The volume's inclusion of non-US contexts and understudied groups is highly welcome, as are the rigorous theoretical and methodological approaches used. --Journal of Anthropological Research

"""A valuable contribution to both the anthropology of obesity and body capital theory. The volume's inclusion of non-US contexts and understudied groups is highly welcome, as are the rigorous theoretical and methodological approaches used."" --Journal of Anthropological Research"

A valuable contribution to both the anthropology of obesity and body capital theory. The volume's inclusion of non-US contexts and understudied groups is highly welcome, as are the rigorous theoretical and methodological approaches used. --Journal of Anthropological Research

Author Information

Eileen P. Anderson-Fye directs the Medical Humanities and Social Medicine Initiative at Case Western Reserve University, where she also is an associate professor of bioethics and the leader of the Medicine, Society and Culture track of the School of Medicine’s bioethics master’s degree program. Alexandra Brewis is a President’s Professor Emeritus and a Distinguished Sustainability Scientist at Arizona State University, where she also co-leads the translational Mayo Clinic–ASU Obesity Solutions initiative and serves as associate vice president of Social Sciences.

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