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How anti-fatness and welfare stigma have been weaponized against the poor
Now proclaimed to have overtaken hunger as the hallmark of poverty globally, obesity is widely presented as a profound threat to the health of individuals, populations, and even national economies. In The Greedy Poor, Nicola J. Smith and Amelia G. Morris explore the origins of this prevailing narrative, arguing that it is not obesity itself, but the harmful political, economic, and cultural discourses surrounding obesity that perpetuate poverty and inequality.
Bringing together political economy, feminist, and queer insights, Smith and Morris explore how the governance of poverty and obesity has evolved over time. To chart the changing shape of body politics, they draw on deep archival research based in Britain, one of the most economically unequal of the world's wealthy nations. Changing forms of governmental regulation like welfare support and "feed the poor" initiatives show us how poverty and obesity were reframed as matters of moral and individual failing. Meanwhile, neoliberal policies and austerity measures depicted the state as fat, bloated, and in need of "trimming down."
Ultimately, Smith and Morris examine "fatness" as a complicated social, political, and economic construct, one that transcends the superficial questions of body size, weight, and dieting that permeate our culture. The Greedy Poor reveals how the fat, poor body has not only become increasingly politicized, but also weaponized to perpetuate poverty, inequality, and economic injustice.
"Sizeism and fatphobia are readily apparent in everyday life yet rarely centred in critical political economy scholarship. Here is a book which makes that move, and in doing so turns the standard treatment of obesity and poverty inside out. Rather than asking how one causes the other, Smith and Morris instead consider how the pathologization of fatness has enabled economic inequality. Through a discursive genealogy covering medical opinion, cultural commentary and political debate, they show how the figure of the ‘greedy poor’ has been used to legitimise deprivation in modern Britain. A vital study in how impoverishment works upon and through the body."
Nicola J. Smith is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham in the UK. She is the author and co-editor of many books, including Capitalism’s Sexual History.
Amelia Morris (Author)
Amelia Morris is a Lecturer in Media and Communications at the University of Exeter in the UK. She is the author of The Politics of Weight: Feminist Dichotomies of Power in Dieting.