Big Fat Globalization Essay

ABSTRACTIt has of disco biscuit times been find that corpulency follows a sociostinting gradient which unfortunately affects the poor. This subject proposes the outline of a sociological theory of corpulency as a sequel of globalisation factors, much(prenominal) as advertise market deregulation. Forced to trim long-dated hours and with rase takes of job-security workers in low remunerative jobs hurl fewer opportunities to burn calories, and atomic number 18 to a greater extent liable(predicate) to consume fast-food. This combination has led to luxuriously levels of corpulency among the poor in countries that have adopted neo-liberal press market restores. in that respect are both(prenominal) human phenomena, which seem to be the result of individual actions and personal decisions. Yet, these phenomena are often on ambient inspection as much a result of sociable factors as of psychological wizards.In 1897, Emile Durkheim (1997) showed that the self-annih ilation perhaps the most personal of all decisions could be analysed through the conceptual lenses of sociology. corpulency, much like suicide, is often regarded as a personal problem result of an inability to control ones desires in front of the fridge. corpulency does have a psychological, and, indeed, a medical examination, dimension, insofar like the suicide, this growing phenomenon as well has a social dimension. This base is an attempt to do the same for obesity as Emile Durkheim did to the study of suicide to analyse it in the inflammation of the theories of sociology. fleshiness and Social ScienceInterest in the social aspects of obesity is nothing new. Jeffrey Sobal has written extensively about the social and psychological consequences of obesity , including the stigmatisation and discrimination of obese and even overweight individuals (Sobal 2004).Scholars with a more anthropological twist have written about the different social perceptions of obesity, e.g. the po sitive view of fatness among aboutindigenous peoples (Swinburne et al. 1996). In an article entitled, An anthropological Perspective on Obesity (Brown and Konner 1987), the authors appoint that cross cultural data about body orientations for women reveal that over 80% of cultures for which shape preference data are available, people prefer a plump shape (cited in Sobal 2004, 383).That these ideals are plant in their respective cultures is perhaps best distinguishd by the polished statuette Venus of Willendorf, by common archaeological consent the oldest known work of art. Stone age man evidently preferred a big girl complete with multiple love-handles, someone who could both carry and nurture his upshot under the harsh conditions of the Palaeolithic world.Other instances of the cultural acceptance of large people obese Buddha statues in the Far East and rituals of prenuptial fattening in many cultures, where fatness is seen as sexually mesmeric (Brink 1989).That fat has often been a symbol of status is not merely an anthropological observation. In the nineteenth Century, in Britain, according to Williams and Germov, a large, curved, bodyconnoted fertility, wealth and senior high status. While poor women were occupied with material work, the voluptuous women of the middle kindes were often viewed as objects of art, luxury, status, virtue and beauty (Williams and Germov 2004, 342). Fatness, they go on, was linked to ablaze stability, strength (stored energy), good health, and refinement to leisure (Ibid).These observations are worth bearing in mind when we talk of obesity. Obesity is to a certain extend a social construct. But obesity is also more than this. As an increasing medical problem, obesity is not merely a condition that can be or should be analysed in the light of perception and aesthetics. Obesity is also a product of biological, psychological, and social conditions.While not ignoring the importance of the former two factors, thi s paper presents an account of the latter. While correlation coefficients between obesity andsocial and economic background variables have been reported (Flegal et al. 2000), sociological analyses have thus far not addressed the fountainhead of the social etiology of obesity. This paper judges to present a first step towards remedying this.The Obesity Debate wherefore are we so fat? asked American magazine The field of study Geographic in a feature article in the summer of 2004 (National Geographic 2004). The use of the collective noun we seemed particularly warranted as new-fashioned statistics show that more than 65 per centum of us (the British) are overweight. (defined as having a Body-Mass baron of 25 or above). Still more alarming 20 percentageage of us are clinically obese (defined as having a Body-Mass Index of 30 or above).(House of Commons Select charge on health 2004).Britain is not alone in this. In America the figure is even higher 30 per cent of the Americans are obese (US Department of Health and Social Services 2000). According to a recent study of obesity in the regular army, diet related illnesses are responsible for four out of the ten leading causes of death. (Bush and Williams 1999, 135).These figures matter for more than psychological and aesthetic reasons. It is estimated that more than 30.000 deaths per year in the UK are attributed to obesity or obesity related illnesses (House of Commons Select Committee on Health 2004, 6). In the gaudy words of one medical expert this is an epidemicthe likes of which we have not had before in chronic diseaseobesity is making HIV look, economically, like a bad case of the flu (William Dietz quoted in Greitser 2000, 42). resume to this that close to ten percent of the wide-cut NHS budget is allocated to obesity and related illnesses, and it is difficult to dispute that obesity is a major health concern as well as a major socio-political problem.Facts1 much(prenominal)(prenominal) as the se more than justify the Chief checkup Officers conclusion that obesity is a health time bomb that needs diffusion (Chief Medical Officer quoted in HC Select Committee on Health 2004, 8).But public health is not just about diagnosing and treating conditions, it is also about understanding causes, the identification of which will enable us to take the appropriate prophylactic measures to fleck the epidemic.Yet, there is far from agreement on what these causes are. The explanations for the obesity epidemic cited in the popular press, e.g. in The National Geographic and in Newsweek (2004) were all biological in origin and medical in consequence.Quoting the work of medical geneticist Rudolph Leibel, The National Geographic concluded that obesity was down to genetics. Our overeating, the magazine quoted Leibel as saying, is not the untoward result of deranged upbringing. It is genes talking (National Geographic 2004, 62).This biochemical reductionism is not new though the underlying intelligence has agitated. As far back as 1924, the editors of the journal of the American Medical Association editorialised that obesity was stringently the result of malfunctions in normal metabolic processes (Editorial The Journal of the American Medical Association 1924, 1003).Contrary to the whimsey left by features such as those in Newsweek, the National Geographic and the octogenarian editorial, the picture is a good deal more complex than that. This is increasingly recognised within medicine. A report from the American Institute of Medicine is an example of a critique of the geneticist view there has been no real change in the gene pool during this period of increasing obesity. The root problem, therefore must lie in the powerful social and cultural forces that promote an energy-rich diet and a sedentary lifestyle (Institute of Medicine 1995, 152). in that respect is evidence to support the veracity of the hypothesis that social and cultural forces play a role (Flegal et al. 2000, 6).What is middleman about the obesity epidemic is the extent to which it reflects social class conditions. To cite but one example the Health Surveyfor England has shown that in 2001, 14 percent of women in professional groups were obese, while 28 percent of women from unskilled manual occupations were categorised as such (House of Commons Select Committee on Health 2004, 16).Similar examples are legion. As a study concluded the largest rates of obesity occur among commonwealth groups with the highest pauperisation rates and the least education (Drewnowski and Specter 2004, 6).This correlation between destitution and obesity is credibly to be the result of underlying social factors. It is not that there is an automatic relationship between poverty and obesity. This relationship is a new phenomenon, which, consequently, needs to be analysed in the light of recent social, political and economic developments.As Ulrich Beck has observed the struggle for ones workaday b read has lost its urgency as the cardinal problem overshadowing everything elsefor many people the problems of overweight take the place of hunger (Bech 1997, 21). The interesting question from a sociological point of view as well as from a medical one is why.Globalisation and Obesity Towards a PatternIt is difficult to dispute that obesity is a social condition, which adversely affects those in low remunerative/short term jobs. Needless to say, obesity does have a significant biomedical component what happens inside the body after you have munched your gargantuan Mac obviously requires a physiological/biochemical explanation. However, it is (from a sociological and public health point of view) equally important to descend the factors which lead you to eat the Big Mac in the first place. What we endeavour to answer is the social aetiology of obesity the social causes, which lead to weight gain.The aforementioned research findings strongly indicate that weight problems and pove rty are highly statistically correlated. As a oft-cited study saiddiet affects the health of socially disadvantaged people from cradle to grave (James, Nelson, Ralph, and Leather 1999, 1545).Of course a quote does not leave a fact, nor does a statistical association. The question is what lies behind these correlations?Some could with some justification argue that these class differences merely reflect and reconfirm the existence of serious inequalities in health as reported in the coloured Report in the early 1980s (Working Group on Inequalities in Health 1982).What has to date been missing from the literature on obesity as well as that on health in oecumenic has been more ambitious theoretical explanations linking medical conditions in this case obesity to more general sociological discourses and theoretical trends (such as modernisation and globalisation). angiotensin-converting enzyme obvious yet overlooked hypothesis is that societal changes from a traditional indus trial society to a globalised (deregulated) economy has created new patterns of life and work, which have had adverse effects on food wasting disease, exercise, and hence has contributed to the increase in the growth of the obesity epidemic.According to this hypothesis, the approaching of a neo-liberal economic regime has had and continues to have profound consequences for working patterns especially for those in low paid/insecure jobs. This hypothesis is, in fact, consistent with observations made by sociologists such as Anthony Giddens who have observed that one of the ways globalisation has affected family life in Britain is by increasing the amount of time that people spend each week at work (Giddens 2004, 62).In addition to working longer hours, individuals are increasingly working in service sector jobs (such as call centres) with provide small(a) opportunity for physical exercise. With flexible working hours, individuals are likely to eat later and more likely to consum e fast-food (Dalton 2004, 95). Themedical consequence of this is that they are unlikely to burn the extra calories they consume.While no evidence of this has been published using UK figures, data from America confirm this trend Americans now spend almost half(prenominal) of their food dollars on food away from home 47 percent, or $354.4 billion in 1998 (Dalton 2004, 94) .That the locomote life-style brought about by changes in labour market is in part responsible for this, is underlined by figures from the fast food chains reporting that drive-thru sales now account for more than half of their substance sales (Dalton 2004, 95)2.That this has contributed to the obesity epidemic is underlined by the fact that away from home foods contain more total fat and saturated fat on a per-calorie basis than at home food (Dalton 2004, 94).As a further consequence of the changes in working patterns and the less free time available individuals are less likely to engage in sport and social leisure activities factors which have been shown to be negatively correlated with weight gain (Dalton 2004, 95).Again American figures illustrate the trend. In 1991, 46 percent of high school students and 57 percent of middle school students were enrolled in sport activities (Sallis 1993, 403). By 1999, those figures had dropped to 29 percent of high-school students and 35 percent of middle school students. On average there is a 3 percent decrease in the number of kids who take part in sporting activities on a daily basis (CDC 2000).Viewed in this light is perhaps not surprising that the countries in the forefront of globalisation (especially labour market deregulation) are also the countries with the highest incidence of obesity (See table One). Conversely, countries with less globalised economies, have had lower sometimes much lower levels of obesity.A few examples will suffice. In Sweden a country that has not followed the neo-liberal reform agenda the number of overweight p eople is 39 per cent(the same figure as France some different country that has resisted neo-liberal reforms). The figure for Norway another affluent society in the same category is even lower 25 percent (www.iotf.org).That labour market dergeulation goes hand in hand with obesity, seems to be confirmed when we product line the obesity figures from globalised countries with similar figures from less globalised economies (as measured by the Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom). The Pearsons Correlation Coefficient between this measure of globalisation (admittedly a gross proxy) and obesity rate is a Pearsons R of -.71. In other words, the less globalised the economy, the lower the number of obese people. While this correlation is not all conclusive and only significant at 0.37 (two-tailed), it does suggest the existence of a causative link between obesity and globalisation.Table One Index of Economic Freedom and Obesity rangeCountryIndex of Economic Freedom %ObeseAust ralia1.8820France2.63 8Finland1.9513Netherlands2.04 8Norway2.25 7United Kingdom1.7917USA1.8525Sources The Heritage Foundation and www.iuns.com (accessed 14 August 2004)While governments of the most globalised economies such as Australia, the UK and the USA have gone to great lengths in their efforts to deregulate the economies and give the market a stronger role, other countries especially those with strong corporatist traditions (See Lijphart 1999) have adopted a different approach to globalisation.In the Netherlands the government, trade unions, and employers associations have negotiated responses to globalisation, which have prevented the growing inequalities and levels of job-insecurity associated with globalisation inAustralia (Bessant and Watts 2002, 306)., Britain and the USA (Giddens 2001, 69).Consequently, the Dutch workers are not under the same pressures as their British and American counterparts in having to seek low paid/short term employment, with all the consequent negative implications on food consumption and lack of time for physical exercise (Freedman 2000).The difference between these two pure types of welfare ceilingist economy is not merely of importance for the reasons identified above (food intake with little opportunity to burn calories). thither is also evidence to suggest that the Dutch model is more conducive to the formation of social capital, which in turn is negatively correlated with levels of obesity (Putnam 2000, 264).Further globalisation is more than just labour market deregulation. Global liberalisation of trade under the WTO and liberalisation of the market for broadcasting are other factors to be taken into account. Globalisation is a mix of contingent factors which when combined create social developments.One of the consequences of globalisation is a society, in which consumers both enjoy the benefits of cheap food from around the globe, while at the same time, are being subjected to advertisements from multinationa l food and beverage producers, such as McDonalds, Pepsi, Burger King, Coca Cola, and others.The level of this influence can hardly be exaggerated in one year McDonald spent in excess of 1 billion US-dollars on publicise for kids (Brownell and Horgen 2003, 60).Globalisation has profoundly affected capitalist democracies, yet not all countries have responded by deregulating labour markets and unleashing market forces. In some cases, countries have (successfully) attempted to regulate the forces of globalisation, e.g. through restrictions on media advertising (especially on TV). In the Netherlands the public broadcastersare not allowed to interrupt programmes aimed at the Under-12 year olds with advertisements. Similar restrictions have been introduced in Sweden and Norway (www.childrensprogrammes.org).That such restrictions have been introduced in small countries with relatively open economies is an indication perhaps even a proof that the effects of globalisation are not inevitabl e that political intervention has not been rendered impossible by globalisationConclusionThere is no question that the rates of obesity and Type 2 Diabetes follow a socioeconomic gradient, such that the burden of disease falls disproportionally on people with limited resources, racial-ethnic minorities, and the poor. consequently wrote two dieticians recently (Drewnowski and Specter 2004, 6). Previously, scholarly studies in the social aetiology of obesity have stopped short of development these statistically based conclusions into a more general theoretical sociological framework.In this paper a case has been made for the view that obesity is at least in part a consequence of the recent political and economic developments commonly known as globalisation.Globalisation has led some governments (e.g. in the USA, Britain and Australia) to enact and implement labour market reforms (flexible job-markets with less job-security). One of the consequences of this development has been pr essures on families and individuals in low paid/temporary jobs. Through this globalisation has created conditions, which are conducive to over-consumption of high-energy foods.Forced to work longer hours, individuals have less time to prepare meals opting instead for pre-prepared fast food with a high fat content.In addition to this development, the availability of cheap food from around the globe coupled with advertising from multinationals has resulted in new pressures which have led to a growth in the consumption of energy-rich foodamong the poor.Thus a combination of social factors have contributed to the fast growing epidemic of obesity which is eroding our health budgets, lowering self-esteem and creating premature deaths.ReferencesAmerican Medical Association (1924), What Causes Obesity, Editorial, The Journal of the American Medical Association, 1924, 83, 1003.Ulrich Beck, Risk Society. Towards a New Modernity, London, Sage, 1997, p. 21.Bessant, Judith and Watts, Rob (2002) Sociology Australia. Crows Nest, NSW Allen&UnwinP.J. 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