Theory and practice of fat.

Abstract

Fat Theory represents the cognitive doctrine of fat--i.e., objectified knowledge products which serve to explain it. We review two major bodies of current literature: The professional reports of obesity research and the popular accounts of "overweight" in the lay press. Considered as major repositories of a legitimating lore, these clinical constructions and popular paradigms are exposed and compared in terms of their definitional, physiological, psychological and symbolic formulations on fat. This study explores the contemporary social construction of fat, defined as an object of human meaning systems and denoting both cognitive and evaluative orientations. We focus on Fat Theory and Fat Practice as related aspects of a social reality-building process. Fat Practice refers to the ways of life of fat people--that is, people who identify themselves as "compulsive overeaters, " people who diet, people who elect surgery for obesity and people who are members of weight reducing groups. We present (1) a typology of compulsive food practices and associated modes of consciousness, (2) participant-observation reports from local settings of two nationally-coordinated fat organizations, and (3) interview data from patients of obesity surgery.