The document discusses a study on the "micropolitics of obesity" which examines how individuals become fat or slimmer through their material relationships and interactions with food, family, money, and food retailers. It analyzes interview transcripts to identify the range of relationships in people's "obesity assemblages" and how these relationships affect their bodies. While the desire to lose weight differs between becoming fat vs slimmer, the many powerful relationships that make up the "obesity assemblage" remain the same. These immediate relationships are ultimately shaped by broader social and economic forces related to industrialized food production, marketing and retail.

1. TheMicropoliticsof Obesity
Nick J Fox
University of Sheffield

2. Introduction
• Obesity is a disease of Western societies, but not necessarily
of affluence.
• There is a class gradient in obesity.
• Public health approaches to obesity individualise it as a
problem of nutrition, metabolism or life-style.
• Most sociological studies have focused upon experiences of
weight gain and loss, or assess how to alter people’s
behaviour.
• By contrast, this materialist analysis investigates the
micropolitics of becoming fat and becoming-slim(mer).
• It assesses how these micropolitics articulate with broader
material (economic, sociological and political) forces.

3. TheStudy
• Study funded by NIHR CLAHRC, Yorkshire and
Humber.
• Sample: Forty-five obese , overweight, or BMI 20 -25
adults ,recruited via the South Yorkshire Cohort .
• Data collection: semi-structured face-to-face
interviews, fully transcribed.
• Data analysis: detailed reading of transcripts that
focuses upon fat and slimming bodies’ material
relations (e.g. with food, supermarkets, friends and
family, money etc).

4. A (new) materialist perspective
• Materialist analysis explores what bodies, and assemblages
of bodies, can do, rather than what they are.
• Looks at bodies’ material relations, how these affect or are
affected, and the micropolitics between these relations.
• Considers material forces arising from both structural and
‘macro’ level social phenomena, and the material products of
thoughts, desires, feelings and abstract concepts.
• As such, this perspective cuts across dualisms of
culture/nature; micro/macro; and animate/inanimate.

5. Method of analysis
• Use transcripts to identify the material relations in
becoming-fat and becoming-slim(mer) assemblages.
• Identify the forces (affects) between these material
relations, and what these forces do (what capacities
they produce).
• From this, develop understanding of the micropolitics
of becoming-fat and becoming-slim(mer)
assemblages.
• Draw conclusions about what social and economic
forces are driving increases in obesity and how it can
be countered.

6. Insidetheobesity-assemblage
• Close reading of transcripts provided the range of relations in
the assemblage:
• humans (‘husband’, ‘little girl’, ‘Auntie’, ‘parents’, ‘doctor’);
• food (‘extra lean meat’, ‘curry’, ‘French cuisine’, ‘biscuit’,
chocolate’);
• resources (‘money’, ‘time’);
• body parts (‘complexion’, ‘skin’);
• physical entities (‘house’, ‘this area’, supermarkets, restaurants
and take-away stores);
• organisations and institutions (‘Slimming World’, workplaces,
food bank);
• abstract concepts (‘BMI’, ‘metabolism’).

7. Assemblagemicropolitics
• The relations in the obesity-assemblage affect
and are affected, producing certain outcomes and
effects (for instance becoming fat or slimmer).
• The analysis sought out the micropolitical effects
of these interactions, in terms of affectivity.
• Examples: foodstuffs affect bodily desires;
slimming clubs affect what a body can eat;
financial constraints affect what can be eaten.

8. Micropoliticsof becoming-fat
• Bodies are affected by food:
‘Oh I eat a lot of food, yes. I’ve got a really,
really massive appetite, but I eat a lot of
rubbish as well, do you know what I mean?
Phenomenal amounts of cake, biscuits,
chocolate, crisps, really loads and I mean
loads.’ (6.2)

9. Micropoliticsof becoming-fat
• Bodies are affected by family:
‘There’s only certain things I’ll buy that they make
because of [husband], well it’s probably [husband]’s
influence because he doesn’t like, like your Heinz, I
always buy Heinz soup, always buy Heinz red sauce,
always buy HP brown sauce. So then salad cream
and mayonnaise, because [husband] doesn’t eat and
it’s only me and [daughter] that eats that, we get Asda
homemade because I’m not really bothered what it
tastes like.’ (7.2)

10. Micropoliticsof becoming-fat
• Bodies are affected by money:
‘We’ve had to bulk, we’ve had to, because we didn’t
have any money at all, so we’re having to eat what
we’ve got from the food bank.’ (12.2)
‘[Fruit] costs loads more, ... which is why we put the
weight back on, we were having processed foods, so
we’d have a bag of chips in the oven, in the freezer,
we’d have pizzas or veg fingers or something that
was just cheap and cheerful. (8.2)

11. Micropoliticsof becoming-fat
• Bodies are affected by food retailers:
‘That’s what Morrison’s is like to me. It’s like a magnet,
you know. Ooh look at this, you haven’t seen this for
ages. And when it were first opened they’d got like
little areas ... it were very much you’ve got to go in
this way and then you’ve got to go round there, so
you’ve got to go an look at everything, you know.’
(23.2)
‘I look around and see what they’ve got on offer and if I
like it I buy it whether I’ve had it before or not. I don’t
have any lists.’ (6.2)

12. Micropoliticsof becoming-slim
• Bodies are affected by changed relations
to food:
‘So, food wise now we’re eating really, really healthily. Loads of
fruit and veg and extra lean meat. I buy extra lean minced beef
from Sainsbury’s and (spouse’s name) really doesn’t like eating
fish but about once a week I buy that cod loin that’s got no
bones and skin on and I’ll probably poach that in milk and then
put some low fat sauces on top’ (1.1)

13. Micropoliticsof becoming-slim
• Bodies are affected by nutritional
concepts:
‘And in my mind I’ve always got that I’m going to choose something
healthy. ... But in my mind I’m always thinking for me, because
I’ve got high cholesterol I think right I’ll cut my fat down, but fat
makes everything taste so much nicer and it’s fat that fills you
up. You can eat bloody carbohydrates until you’re blue in face,
but it’s the fat isn’t it that satiates your appetite.’ (6.2)

14. Micropoliticsof becoming-slim
• Bodies are affected by family preferences:
‘I do try to buy that 50/50 bread as well, although I have bought
white bread for the last couple of, just for a change really
because I’m sick of eating it as well. But I am going to go back
to buying 50/50 and I’m going to buy some brown bread as well
and I’m going to freeze it and I’m going to take brown bread.
Because I like brown bread, it’s just nobody else does. But
when you consider brown bread’s like a pound a loaf and having
to buy three different loaves for them and one load for myself,
then it can get quite expensive in bread department.’ (7.2)

15. Micropoliticsof becoming-slim
• Bodies are differently affected by food retailers:
‘They’ve opened a small Sainsbury’s store in (local place). Now I
can’t get every single thing, especially now I’m doing Slimming
World. I can eat supernoodles as long as there the specific low
fat ones and like the extra, extra light salad cream and
mayonnaise, that are recommended by Slimming World, they
don’t have a full range of stuff. ... It’s only a little one so I started
going to do a big shop at the big Sainsbury’s and stock up on the
stuff that I know I can’t get like me low fat and specific stuff. ...
because I know about the Sainsbury’s stuff, it’s easier for me
rather than to go to another supermarket. But only for
convenience rather than for anything else.’ (1.2)

16. Summary of thefindings
• Bodies are caught up in assemblages of forces
connecting them to food-stuffs, cultural and
interpersonal relations around food and eating, family
and friends, media and medical discourses on food,
eating and obesity, material resources and systems of
food production, distribution and marketing.
• The o nly diffe re nce be twe e n the be co m ing fat and
be co m ing slim (m e r) asse m blag e is a shift fro m a
de sire fo r fo o d to a de sire to lo se we ig ht.
• This shift does not in itself diminish the affectivity of
the many other powerful relations in the obesity-
assemblage.

17. Thelarger picture
• The immediate relations in the obesity-assemblage mediate a
broader set of social and economic relations.
• For example, the local relation between a consumer and a
supermarket or take-away outlet depends on the marketised
character of global industrialised food production, processing and
distribution.
• The last 50 years have been marked by a shift from local and
towards global markets in food production and retail.
• Food production and processing is dominated by large, multinational
agribusiness corporations that have a massive investment in
increasing productivity through research and development, and an
economic and scientific orientation toward feeding mass populations
rather than local communities.

18. A way forward?
• We cannot expect individuals to resist the forces that
are driving the food market with will-power alone.
• We need to challenge the ways food is produced and
marketed.
• The food sovereignty movement (which advocates
supporting local producers and retailers, challenging
food monopolies and imposing tighter regulation)
offers a vehicle to effect this fundamental challenge,
when coupled to powerful public health arguments
about health.
• Public health policy needs to confront the economic
and social relations of the food market.

19. Reference
• Fox, N.J., Bissell, P., Peacock, M., & Blackburn,
J. (2016) The micropolitics of obesity:
materialism, markets and food sovereignty.
So cio lo g y. E-pub ahead of print:
• doi: 10.1177/0038038516647668

20. TheMicropoliticsof Obesity