IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v305y2022ics0277953622003070.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Public health in the making: Dietary innovators and their on-the-job sociology

Author

Listed:
  • Cupit, Caroline

Abstract

Diet is understood to be one of the most important influences on public health and chronic disease, and is particularly implicated in the so-called ‘obesity epidemic’. Yet interventions aiming to improve the population's dietary habits have failed to translate into widespread health improvements. Simultaneously, the knowledge landscape has become increasingly contentious, with fat activism challenging dominant approaches to how obesity is framed and addressed. This paper is based on 24 ethnographic interviews, and explores the work of health practitioners promoting therapeutic carbohydrate restriction (‘low-carb’ diets) for people with metabolic health conditions. Drawing on Michel Callon's study of technological innovation, I show practitioners engaging in ‘on-the-job sociology’—situated sociological work to justify, and forge a space for, innovative dietary intervention. These innovators employ physiological explanations of hormones, satiety (or hunger), and pleasure (or shame), supported with personal experience, to emphasise material connections between particular eating habits and the sustainability of dietary improvement in everyday life. They resist fat activist influence on healthcare practice (that has resulted in practitioners avoiding conversations about diet, fatness and health), as well as the more extensively critiqued practices of health promotion. Deflecting blame/shame from individuals, innovators spotlight the role of the food industry in undermining public understandings of food and physiology, and dietary improvement that is achievable and sustainable. Through on-the-job sociology, innovators forge a space to engage patients in collaborative dietary experimentation and improvement. This study highlights the importance of on-the-job sociology in the contemporary knowledge landscape, providing new insights about public health in the making.

Suggested Citation

  • Cupit, Caroline, 2022. "Public health in the making: Dietary innovators and their on-the-job sociology," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 305(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:305:y:2022:i:c:s0277953622003070
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953622003070
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115001?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. Allen, Davina, 2009. "From boundary concept to boundary object: The practice and politics of care pathway development," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 354-361, August.
    2. Rodney, Alexandra, 2018. "Pathogenic or health-promoting? How food is framed in healthy living media for women," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 213(C), pages 37-44.
    3. Blackburn, Maxine & Stathi, Afroditi, 2019. "Moral discourse in general practitioners’ accounts of obesity communication," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 230(C), pages 166-173.
    4. Gough, Ian, 2015. "The Political Economy of Prevention," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 45(2), pages 307-327, April.
    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. Luo, Xiaoyi & Pu, Haixia & Wang, Shaobin & Zhong, Dijun & Liu, Feng & Li, Zhen, 2024. "Influence of Internet use on Chinese residents’ health: The mediating role of health knowledge," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 76(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. Gough, Ian, 2020. "The case for Universal Basic Services," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 107815, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Battin, Gudrun Songøygard & Romsland, Grace Inga & Christiansen, Bjørg, 2021. "The puzzle of therapeutic emplotment: creating a shared clinical plot through interprofessional interaction in biopsychosocial pain rehabilitation," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 277(C).
    3. Katharina Bohnenberger, 2020. "Money, Vouchers, Public Infrastructures? A Framework for Sustainable Welfare Benefits," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(2), pages 1-30, January.
    4. Fleming, Mark D. & Safaeinili, Nadia & Knox, Margae & Hernandez, Elizabeth & Brewster, Amanda L., 2023. "Between health care and social services: Boundary objects and cross-sector collaboration," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 320(C).
    5. Per Magnus Mæhle & Ingrid Kristine Small Hanto & Sigbjørn Smeland, 2020. "Practicing Integrated Care Pathways in Norwegian Hospitals: Coordination through Industrialized Standardization, Value Chains, and Quality Management or an Organizational Equivalent to Improvised Jazz," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(24), pages 1-32, December.
    6. Callum J Gunn & Sevgi E & Teresa Finlay & Lidewij Eva & Teun Zuiderent-Jerak & Tjerk Jan Schuitmaker-Warnaar, 2023. "Co-design and its consequences: developing a shared patient engagement framework in the IMI-PARADIGM project," Science and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 50(6), pages 1018-1028.
    7. Wright, Sarah & Porteous, Mary & Stirling, Diane & Young, Oliver & Gourley, Charlie & Hallowell, Nina, 2019. "Negotiating jurisdictional boundaries in response to new genetic possibilities in breast cancer care: The creation of an ‘oncogenetic taskscape’," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 225(C), pages 26-33.
    8. Saario, Sirpa & Hall, Christopher & Peckover, Sue, 2012. "Inter-professional electronic documents and child health: A study of persisting non-electronic communication in the use of electronic documents," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 75(12), pages 2207-2214.
    9. Julien Salama, 2023. "Financing the post-growth state," Post-Print hal-04280023, HAL.
    10. Wiig, Siri & Robert, Glenn & Anderson, Janet E. & Pietikainen, Elina & Reiman, Teemu & Macchi, Luigi & Aase, Karina, 2014. "Applying different quality and safety models in healthcare improvement work: Boundary objects and system thinking," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 134-144.
    11. Charry, Karine & Tessitore, Tina, 2021. "I tweet, they follow, you eat: Number of followers as nudge on social media to eat more healthily," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 269(C).
    12. Ringel, Megan M. & Ditto, Peter H., 2019. "The moralization of obesity," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 237(C), pages 1-1.
    13. Gilbert, Patrick & Laporte, Marie-Eve, 2022. "War and peace in hospitals: Humans, objects and paradoxes," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 253-263.
    14. Hajizadeh, Anisa & Heath, Laura & Ahmad, Aryati & Kebbe, Maryam & Jebb, Susan Anne & Aveyard, Paul & Hughes, Gemma, 2023. "Clinician resistance to broaching the topic of weight in primary care: Digging deeper into weight management using strong structuration theory," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 329(C).
    15. Mathias Waelli & Marie-Léandre Gomez & Claude Sicotte & Adrian Zicari & Jean-Yves Bonnefond & Philippe Lorino & Etienne Minvielle, 2016. "Keys to successful implementation of a French national quality indicator in health care organizations: a qualitative study," Post-Print hal-01632642, HAL.
    16. Dowrick, Anna & Kelly, Moira & Feder, Gene, 2020. "Boundary spanners: Negotiating connections across primary care and domestic violence and abuse services," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 245(C).
    17. Sajtos, Laszlo & Rouse, Paul & Harrison, Julie & Parsons, Matthew, 2014. "Case-mix system as a boundary object: the case of home care services," Australasian marketing journal, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 189-196.
    18. Lindberg, Kajsa & Walter, Lars & Raviola, Elena, 2017. "Performing boundary work: The emergence of a new practice in a hybrid operating room," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 182(C), pages 81-88.
    19. Kristín Björnsdóttir, 2014. "The place of standardisation in home care practice: an ethnographic study," Journal of Clinical Nursing, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 23(9-10), pages 1411-1420, May.
    20. Davina Allen & Carl May, 2017. "Organizing Practice and Practicing Organization: An Outline of Translational Mobilization Theory," SAGE Open, , vol. 7(2), pages 21582440177, June.

    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:305:y:2022:i:c:s0277953622003070. 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.