| Weight stigma, addiction, science, and the medication of fatness in mid-twentieth century America. | |
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MedLine Citation:
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PMID: 22280529 Owner: NLM Status: Publisher |
Abstract/OtherAbstract:
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Obesity and overweight are today recognised as subject to harmful stigma. Through an analysis of discussions of obesity in major American newspapers, the medical literature, and pharmaceutical advertising in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, I document a significant shift in medical thinking about overweight and obesity based in psychiatry, and explore the relationship of that shift to changes in popular understandings of fatness after the Second World War. I argue that the psychiatrically-oriented postwar medical thinking about obesity was more stigmatising as compared with the endocrinologically-oriented thinking of the interwar period, in that the newer biomedical theory linked fatness to the already stigmatised condition of addiction and authorised attribution of moral blame to the fat. I further argue that the pharmaceutical industry cannot be assigned the lead role in medicalisation in this period that some authors attributed to it. These events cast doubt on the received view of fatness as subject to decreasing stigma and increasing medicalisation over the course of the twentieth century, and call for exploration of the social factors influencing specific forms of medicalisation. |
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Authors:
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Nicolas Rasmussen |
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Publication Detail:
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Type: JOURNAL ARTICLE Date: 2012-1-26 |
Journal Detail:
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Title: Sociology of health & illness Volume: - ISSN: 1467-9566 ISO Abbreviation: - Publication Date: 2012 Jan |
Date Detail:
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Created Date: 2012-1-27 Completed Date: - Revised Date: - |
Medline Journal Info:
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Nlm Unique ID: 8205036 Medline TA: Sociol Health Illn Country: - |
Other Details:
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Languages: ENG Pagination: - Citation Subset: - |
Copyright Information:
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© 2012 The Author. Sociology of Health & Illness © 2012 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness/Blackwell Publishing Ltd. |
Affiliation:
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School of History and Philosophy, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. |
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From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine
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