IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v128y2015icp309-315.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Short horizons and obesity futures: Disjunctures between public health interventions and everyday temporalities

Author

Listed:
  • Warin, Megan
  • Zivkovic, Tanya
  • Moore, Vivienne
  • Ward, Paul R.
  • Jones, Michelle

Abstract

This paper examines the spatio-temporal disjuncture between ‘the future’ in public health obesity initiatives and the embodied reality of eating. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork in a disadvantaged community in South Australia (August 2012–July 2014), we argue that the future oriented discourses of managing risk employed in obesity prevention programs have limited relevance to the immediacy of poverty, contingencies and survival that mark people's day to day lives. Extending Bourdieu's position that temporality is a central feature of practice, we develop the concept of short horizons to offer a theoretical framework to articulate the tensions between public health imperatives of healthy eating, and local ‘tastes of necessity’. Research undertaken at the time of Australia's largest obesity prevention program (OPAL) demonstrates that pre-emptive and risk-based approaches to health can fail to resonate when the future is not within easy reach. Considering the lack of evidence for success of obesity prevention programs, over-reliance on appeals to ‘the future’ may be a major challenge to the design, operationalisation and success of interventions. Attention to local rather than future horizons reveals a range of innovative strategies around everyday food and eating practices, and these capabilities need to be understood and supported in the delivery of obesity interventions. We argue, therefore, that public health initiatives should be located in the dynamics of a living present, tailored to the particular, localised spatio-temporal perspectives and material circumstances in which people live.

Suggested Citation

  • Warin, Megan & Zivkovic, Tanya & Moore, Vivienne & Ward, Paul R. & Jones, Michelle, 2015. "Short horizons and obesity futures: Disjunctures between public health interventions and everyday temporalities," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 309-315.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:128:y:2015:i:c:p:309-315
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.01.026
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953615000520
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.01.026?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Graham, Hilary, 1994. "Gender and class as dimensions of smoking behaviour in Britain: Insights from a survey of mothers," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 38(5), pages 691-698, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Farrell, Lucy C. & Warin, Megan J. & Moore, Vivienne M. & Street, Jackie M., 2016. "Socio-economic divergence in public opinions about preventive obesity regulations: Is the purpose to ‘make some things cheaper, more affordable’ or to ‘help them get over their own ignorance’?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 1-8.
    2. Zivkovic, Tanya, 2018. "Forecasting and foreclosing futures: The temporal dissonance of advance care directives," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 215(C), pages 16-22.
    3. Ewa Jarosz, 2019. "Unequal Times: Social Structure, Temporal Perspective, and Time Allocation in Poland," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 141(3), pages 1189-1206, February.
    4. Bissell, Paul & Peacock, Marian & Blackburn, Joanna & Smith, Christine, 2016. "The discordant pleasures of everyday eating: Reflections on the social gradient in obesity under neo-liberalism," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 14-21.
    5. Gibson, Kate & Pollard, Tessa M. & Moffatt, Suzanne, 2021. "Social prescribing and classed inequality: A journey of upward health mobility?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 280(C).
    6. Nichols, Carly E., 2021. "Spaces for women: Rethinking behavior change communication in the context of women's groups and nutrition-sensitive agriculture," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 285(C).
    7. Morris, Stephanie & Wildman, Josephine M. & Gibson, Kate & Moffatt, Suzanne & Pollard, Tessa M., 2022. "Managing disruption at a distance: Unequal experiences of people living with long-term conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 302(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Robinson, Jude & Ritchie, Deborah & Amos, Amanda & Cunningham-Burley, Sarah & Greaves, Lorraine & Martin, Claudia, 2010. "'Waiting until they got home': Gender, smoking and tobacco exposure in households in Scotland," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(5), pages 884-890, September.
    2. Miles, Rebecca, 2006. "Neighborhood disorder and smoking: Findings of a European urban survey," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 63(9), pages 2464-2475, November.
    3. Spencer, Nick, 2006. "Explaining the social gradient in smoking in pregnancy: Early life course accumulation and cross-sectional clustering of social risk exposures in the 1958 British national cohort," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(5), pages 1250-1259, March.
    4. Marilina Santero & Santiago Melendi & Akram Hernández-Vásquez & Vilma Irazola, 2019. "Socio-economic inequalities in smoking prevalence and involuntary exposure to tobacco smoke in Argentina: Analysis of three cross-sectional nationally representative surveys in 2005, 2009 and 2013," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(6), pages 1-16, June.
    5. Dong-Sik Kim & Gyeong-Suk Jeon & Soong-Nang Jang, 2010. "Socioeconomic status, social support and self-rated health among lone mothers in South Korea," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 55(6), pages 551-559, December.
    6. Stephen Birch, 2010. "I dreamed a dream: England reduces health inequalities and wins the world cup," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(8), pages 881-885, August.
    7. Cho, Hong-Jun & Khang, Young-Ho & Jun, Hee-Jin & Kawachi, Ichiro, 2008. "Marital status and smoking in Korea: The influence of gender and age," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(3), pages 609-619, February.
    8. Lim, Seungji & Chung, Woojin & Kim, Hanjoong & Lee, Sunmi, 2010. "The influence of housing tenure and marital status on smoking in South Korea," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 94(2), pages 101-110, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:128:y:2015:i:c:p:309-315. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.