Fatness and the Maternal Body

Obesity is a rising global health problem. On the one hand a clearly defined medical condition, it is at the same time a corporeal state embedded in the social and cultural perception of fatness, body shape and size. Focusing specifically on the maternal body, contributors to the volume examine how the language and notions of obesity connect with, or stand apart from, wider societal values and moralities to do with the body, fatness, reproduction and what is considered natural. A focus on fatness in the context of human reproduction and motherhood offers instructive insights into the global circulation and authority of biomedical facts on fatness (as risky anti-fit, for example). As with other social and cultural studies critical of health policy discourse, this volume challenges the spontaneous connection being made in scientific and popular understanding between fatness and ill health.

Maya Unnithan-Kumar is Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of Sussex. She is currently leading an Economic and Social Research Council (UK)funded research project on state-NGO relations as defined by their engagement with human rights discourse in the fields of sexual, maternal and reproductive health in India.

List of Figures
List of Tables
Preface

Chapter 1. Introduction: Corporeality and Reproduction: Understanding Fatness through the Diverse Experiences of Motherhood, Consumption and Social Regulation
Maya Unnithan-Kumar

Chapter 2. The Traffic in Nature: Maternal Bodies and Obesity
Megan Warin, Vivienne Moore and Michael Davies

Chapter 3. Fat and Fertility, Mobility and Slaves: Long-term Perspectives on Tuareg Obesity and Reproduction
Sara Randall

Chapter 4. Women of Great Weight: Fatness, Reproduction and Gender Dynamics in Tuareg Society
Saskia Walentowitz

Chapter 5.Childbearing, Breast-feeding and Body Weight in Tanzania: Three Bodies, Three Individuals, Many Different Interrelations among the Wagogo (Central Tanzania)
Mara Mabilia

Chapter 6. The Obesity Cycle: The Impact of Maternal Obesity on the Exogenous and Endogenous Causes of Obesity in Offspring in the United Kingdom
Nicola Heslehurst

Chapter 7. Culture, Diet and the Maternal Body: Ghanaian Womens Perspectives on Food, Fat and Childbearing
Ama de-Graft Aikins

Chapter 8. Unhealthy, Unwealthy, Unwise: Social Policy and Nutritional Education in a Disadvantaged Community in Ireland
Shauna Clarke

Chapter 9. The Maharaja Mac: Changing Dietary Patterns in India
Devi Sridhar

Chapter 10. Is there a Relation between Fatness and Reproductive Health? A Study on Body Mass Index and Reproductive Health of Indian Women
Aravinda Meera Guntupalli

Chapter 11. Reproducing Inequalities: Theories and Ethics in Dietetics
Lucy Aphramor and Jacqui Gingras

Notes on Contributors
Index