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Weighing on us all? Quantification and cultural responses to obesity in NHS Britain
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Bivins, Roberta E. (2020) Weighing on us all? Quantification and cultural responses to obesity in NHS Britain. History of Science, 58 (2). pp. 216-242. doi:10.1177/0073275319842965 ISSN 0073-2753 .
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1177/0073275319842965
Abstract
How do cultures of self-quantification intersect with the modern state, particularly in relation to medical provision and health promotion? Here I explore the ways in which British practices and representations of body weight and weight management ignored or interacted with the National Health Service between 1948 and 2004. Through the lens of overweight, I examine health citizenship in the context of universal health provision funded from general taxation, and track attitudes toward “overweight” once its health implications and medical costs affected a public service as well as individual bodies and households. Looking at professional and popular discourses of overweight and obesity, I map the persistence of a highly individual culture of dietary and weight self-management in postwar Britain, and assess the degree to which it was challenged by a new measure of “obesity” – the body mass index – and by visions of an NHS burdened and even threatened by the increasing overweight of the citizens it was created to serve.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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Subjects: | D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain Q Science > QP Physiology R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine R Medicine > RC Internal medicine |
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Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > History Faculty of Arts > History > Centre for the History of Medicine |
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Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Body mass index, Obesity -- Social aspects, Obesity -- Treatment, National health services -- Great Britain, Weight loss, Human body -- Weight | ||||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | History of Science | ||||||||
Publisher: | SAGE Publications | ||||||||
ISSN: | 0073-2753 | ||||||||
Official Date: | 1 July 2020 | ||||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 58 | ||||||||
Number: | 2 | ||||||||
Page Range: | pp. 216-242 | ||||||||
DOI: | 10.1177/0073275319842965 | ||||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 12 February 2019 | ||||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 14 February 2019 | ||||||||
RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
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