YOUR ATTENTION IS DRAWN TO THE FOLLOWING CALL FOR PAPERS:
CFP-AAG Chicago 2006 March 7th - 11th
Placing Fat/Bigness/Corpulence in Geographical Research
This session builds upon Longhurst’s (2005) recent paper which aims
to ‘make some space in the academy for geographers and others interested in
spatiality to take up the issue of ‘fatness/corpulence/bigness’.
Geographical work on fatness can be situated within the context of a
variety of sub-disciplinary interests as well as having the potential to
contribute in new and innovative ways to recent policy and popular debates
concerning obesity and body size. The problem of ‘obesity’ has been
identified in many western and non–western countries by recognising the
growing numbers of children and adults who can be categorised as obese.
This recognition is linked primarily to highlighting the ‘health’ risks,
often unproblematically, associated with being obese and the resultant
costs this will have for the provision of healthcare. However the
definition and classification of obesity is contested. The identification
of obesity or body size more generally as a ‘problem’ often smoothes over
the complexities and differences of what it means and feels to be
categorised as ‘obese/fat/big’. The emergence of more critically engaged
accounts of fatness, therefore, challenges the static nature through which
medical and political actors have fixed fat in moralistic and monetary
terms as ‘bad’ and ‘risky’. This work recognises the multiple emotional and
embodied experiences of fatness and presents an imperative to consider the
role of geographical research interventions in establishing the
differential and contextual constitution of fatness.
In view of the multiple possibilities that geographical approaches to
fatness can provide, we welcome papers that adopt a critical perspective on
the following topics to reflect the diversity of disciplinary interests.
Please note this list should not be seen as exhaustive and only suggestive
of the topics that may be of interest:
Terminology: defining fat/big/obese/corpulent
Engagements with’ the obesity debate’ in western and non-western contexts
Theorisations of ‘the fat body’
Emotions and fatness
Fatness and disability
Bodily textures and boundaries
Surveillance and children’s bodies
Fat activism
Dieting, weight loss and bodily modification
Medical and Surgical interventions
Eating and consumption
Methodological practices and researching with/as bigness
Morality and body size
‘Active’ fat bodies
Abstracts should be received no later than 30th September 2005
Please send abstracts to:
Rachel Colls ([log in to unmask]) or Bethan Evans ([log in to unmask])
Department of Geography, University of Liverpool, Roxby Building, Liverpool
L69 7ZT
|