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187 21 Neoliberalism and the Constitution of Contemporary Bodies Julie Guthman A growing literature in social science uses terms such as “foodscape” or “toxic environment ” as explanations for the so-called epidemic of obesity. The thrust of these arguments is that fast, junky food is everywhere, available all the time, which is the reason that North Americans, and to some extent their counterparts, the British, are becoming increasingly fat. I do not concede the factuality of the “obesity epidemic” as it has been constructed and represented, and I am troubled by the renewed stigmatization of fat people that this epidemic talk has produced. Yet it is important to take the foodscape argument seriously, both because it provides an alternative to rhetorics of personal responsibility and genetic determinism and because it ostensibly draws attention to broader political, economic, and cultural forces in understanding the constitution of contemporary bodies. In other words, it has some affinity with a public health perspective. In that regard, however, the foodscape discourse has several conceptual problems, not the least of which is that it begs the question of who is not fat or getting fat. This makes it a “thin” explanation both analytically and normatively. In other words, to employ these broad, macro analytics in understanding contemporary body sizes, thinness must be explained with the same richness as fatness. The purpose of this essay, then, is to suggest what a richer explanation of contemporary fatness and thinness might look like. To do this, I turn to neoliberalism, arguably the leitmotif of the current era. I draw from scholarship that theorizes neoliberalism as both a political economic project and a mode of governmentality. The overarching argument is that the global political-economic contradictions of the neoliberal era are literally embodied, whereas the “problem” of “obesity” is implicated in how neoliberalism produces different sorts of subjects. Regarding the former I will argue that the material contradictions of neoliberal capitalism are not only resolved in the sphere of surplus distribution, but also in bodies, such that the double fix of eating and dieting produces a political economy of bulimia, as it were, but has differential effects on individuals (with strong correlations with class). Regarding the latter, I will note a culture of bulimia, where on one hand consuming is encouraged and on the other deservingness is performed by being thin no matter how that is accomplished . I will then discuss how the discourse of “obesity,” including the foodscape 188 Julie Guthman argument, is an example of Foucauldian biopolitics. All of this is to suggest that epidemic talk itself has become a technique of neoliberal governmentality that not only disciplines people in relation to their bodies but also produces—and reflects— broader anxieties regarding citizenship, nation, and subjectivity. At the outset, I wish to acknowledge that “obesity” is a medicalized term that does violence to fat people. Yet, because my argument rests in part on how “obesity” has become a powerful, disciplining discourse, I will use the term throughout the chapter in reference to the discourse, duly marked with scare quotes, but otherwise I will use less loaded terms when referring to body size. I trust the reader to recognize the difference . The primary arguments of the chapter will be developed in three different sections. First, however, I take a closer look at popular renditions of the foodscape argument and discuss its thinness. Viewing the Foodscape Amid the moral panic that pervades current discussions of an “obesity epidemic,” some scholars and food writers are searching for more reasoned explanations that do not medicalize fatness or place inordinate blame on fat people. Aiming to shift responsibility for “obesity” to the public policy arena, many of these authors are looking to show how various aspects of the U.S. regulatory environment and economy have contributed to growth in girth. Most of these authors, however, steer clear of the substantive body of scholarship in the political economy of food, and instead resort to more simple arguments. Nevertheless, because most of the authors cited have so contributed to current discussions of “obesity,” we must take their work seriously. In what follows I briefly describe four major variants. The first of these variants points to productivist agriculture itself. In his book Fat Land (one of the more offensive of this genre), for example, Greg Critser (2003) cites a USDA report showing a 15 percent increase in the amount of food available in the United States from 1970 to 1994 (from 3,300 calories to 3...

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