No Appetite for Change: Culture, Liberalism and other Acts of Depoliticization in the Australian Obesity Debate

Abstract

There is wealth of evidence that points to the pernicious ways in which inequities in food, bodies, and health are disproportionally borne. Equally, there is a wealth of evidence that critiques the role of neoliberal imperatives for individuals to take responsibility for their health, and how this tenet reproduces inequity. However, health interventions and public policy remain immune to addressing social determinants of health and ignore the cultural dynamics of power in food systems, interventions, and policy. Drawing from ethnographic research in an Australian community that has high levels of socioeconomic disadvantage and obesity, and the Australian Government’s response to the ‘obesity epidemic’, this article examines the processes and tactics of depoliticization that are used to elide political and sociocultural phenomenon. I leverage the work of Brown and Povinelli to argue that liberalism’s hold on universalisms, autonomy, and individual liberty in obesity discourses subjugates a comprehension of political relations, positioning liberal principles and culture as mutually antagonistic. It is precisely this acultural positioning of liberalism that makes it possible to remove recognition of the power that produces and contours the ‘metabolic rift’ between food systems, public health, and equity priorities. In conclusion, I consider how obesity policy might be different if we paid attention to this culturalization of politics.