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Abstract

There exists an overwhelming view that Western countries are in the grip of an ‘obesity epidemic’. Successive governments since the 1990s have positioned ‘tacking obesity’ as the prime target of their public health strategies and increasingly obesity and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) are framed as a financial burden to the state. With obesity stigma ubiquitous (World Health Organisation, n.d.), there is a persuasive argument that governments instil in citizens a moral responsibility to maintain good health, with the aim of controlling budgets and resources.
This time-bound comparative discourse analysis of neo-liberal government policy uses secondary data in the form of UK government documents. A thematic analysis of weight-based strategy documents established key themes and concepts, which were then aligned with Foucauldian theories of governmentality. This theoretical understanding was then extended to incorporate the reconceptualising of stigma as a mechanism of control.
This study concludes that there is persuasive evidence that the since 2008, the UK government has used a weight focussed, risk- based discourse to perpetuate the notion of a moral requirement for citizens to achieve optimum health status, with success largely defined by body weight. The analysis identified the use of stigmatizing discourse and supports the argument that weight-based stigma can be a form of governmental power. This stigmatizing narrative was found to be more acutely visible in the discourse related to T2DM.

Course: Sociology and Criminology - BSc (Hons) - C0979

Date Deposited: 2022-05-16

URI/permalink: https://library.port.ac.uk/dissert/dis13900.html