Opening Up the Black Box of the Body in Geographical Obesity Research: Toward a Critical Political Ecology of Fat

Abstract

Geographic treatments of the etiology of obesity tend to turn on the obesogenic environment thesis and investigate the relationship between urban form and obesity. With their emphasis on environmental features that mediate eating and exercise activities, these explorations fundamentally rest on behavioral models of obesogenesis. As such, they tend to black-box the biological body as the site where excess calories are putatively metabolized into fat and made unhealthy. Drawing on critical political ecology, this article discusses the limitations of this dominant approach. First it provides some anomalies not well explained by the energy balance model. Then it reports on emerging biomedical research regarding the role of the endocrine system and endocrine-disrupting chemicals in transforming body ecologies to make them more susceptible to adiposity, regardless of caloric intake. This research also points to the active role of adipose tissue in regulating fat. In light of this evidence, the article argues for a rethinking of current geographical approaches to obesity and health more generally, with due attention to the ecologies of bodies as well as the interpretation of science.