Category Body Politics:

Metabolism and Capacity: History and Labour in Post-apartheid South Africa

Posted on by Thomas Cousins

This essay by Thomas Cousins originally appeared on Somatosphere on October 8, 2023. It is reposted with permission by the author and the editors. I start with the question, why was it necessary, from 2008, for Mondi South Africa to spend R50 million (USD 8 million) a year on a nutrition intervention for 10,000 timber plantation labourers in KwaZulu-Natal province? The simple answer, to improve labour productivity, belies the dark histories of colonial conquest and apartheid exploitation, on the one hand, and the developing science of fatigue, nutrition, and infectious disease over the 20th century. The question opens out to a critical look at the way in which these working bodies were understood to metabolise calories and other substances, and suggests a…

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“No Fats No Fems”: Fat-Shaming in the Gay Community

Posted on by Steven Rupp

Hey I keep seeing that most of the gays in the gay community are well-toned. Are you not accepted as a fat person in the community or do they just not find that attractive? In spring 2020, an anonymous user turned to the collective intelligence of the German Q&A platform gutefrage.net expressing his personal concerns: “I’m overweight myself and afraid of not being accepted.” Responses from the online community depicted mixed sentiments: While some users affirmed the societal rejection of fat bodies, others countered by asserting that within the gay community, specifically for so-called “bears,” there is a designated place for fat male bodies. The “gay community” comprises social networks and places where homosexual men interact with each other and manifest shared…

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“You’re exploding!”: Sizeism among Iranian Americans in the Diaspora

Posted on by Sepehr Khosravi

Darya, a 35-year-old PhD student in Florida who was born in Iran, shares a painful memory with me. At a New Year’s party, after she hadn’t seen her cousin in Tehran for three years and after an accident that had her gaining weight,  “instead of saying hi and how are you doing,” Darya explains, “she tells me, ‘Darya you’re exploding!,’ or let me say it in Farsi, ‘Darya, Natereki!’” Darya responded by justifying her body: “I said, ‘yeah, I’m gaining weight but I will be okay soon.’” After the party, Darya was very upset that she didn’t defend herself; she didn’t want to upset her mother. As she told her mother, “I didn’t answer her [cousin] and next time, I’m…

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State Responsibility and the Free Will of Hunger Strikers

Posted on by Heiko Stoff

Free will is the basic concept underpinning liberal capitalism. But it was only put fully into practice in the 1980s, when the state divested itself of responsibility in many ways and individuals were prompted to voluntarily take responsibility for themselves. The ethical principle of self-responsible voluntariness penetrated every sphere of life. Interestingly, this was exemplified by a group whose autonomy appeared to be suspendible by statute—prisoners. The German constitution or Basic Law repeatedly states that nothing should occur that is “against the will” of an individual. Free will is thus established ex negativo. The right to say no seems more important than the question of what exactly this will is. The Basic Law also states, just as vaguely, that everyone…

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„Globesity“: On an Objectionable Narrative of Global Health

Posted on by Nina Mackert

Towards the end of the twentieth century the World Health Organization declared “obesity” a global epidemic. From 2001 onwards the term “globesity” came into use. “Globesity” is understood as a globally observable consequence of the spread of new “lifestyles” common in industrialized countries characterized by increased consumption of high-energy, industrially processed foodstuffs and low physical activity. According to this thesis, more and more people in the global North and increasingly also in the global South are “overweight” and suffer from “obesity,” measured by using the BMI. As “obesity” is classified as a risk factor for chronic, non-communicable diseases, “globesity” has been declared a public health crisis that threatens global society due to high healthcare costs and decreasing productivity. More recently,…

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