Abstract
Chapter 10 begins by asking what pressure points for action exist in societies like Australia to reverse the rise in obesity. We focus on the realm of culture as an overlooked and contested sphere of both deliberate activity and incremental and unplanned change. If obesity is reframed as a sign of a deeply disturbed societal culture, then multiple pressure points are revealed. We draw inspiration from ecologists and resilience theorists to point to the broad types of government and civil society interventions that are required. We conclude by arguing that the obesogenic system can be dismantled by: (1) transitioning to a low-carbon and low-consumption economy; (2) evolving active transport systems based on acknowledging that peak automobility has arrived in many cities; and (3) reducing reliance on energy-dense food supply systems. Action in each of these domains has the potential to alter the unequal and unhealthy life chances which result from the current operations of the obesogenic social forces identified in Chap. 9: social mobility, albeit uneven, which encourages hyper-consumption; inadequate active leisure and incidental activity which accompanies suburbanisation; and flexibilised labour markets which can require convenience food solutions to time pressures.
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Banwell, C., Broom, D., Davies, A., Dixon, J. (2012). Restoring Coherence to a Stressed Social System. In: Weight of Modernity. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8957-1_10
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