Disordered eating and the contradictions of neoliberal governance.
The last decade has seen the development of an important literature on the contradictions between neoliberal norms of corporal citizenship and the forms of consumption that market based food systems promote. This paper seeks to contribute to the literature by exploring the relationship between these contradictions and the increased prevalence of particular eating disorders (binge eating disorder (BED) and bulimia nervosa) Within contemporary neoliberal food systems bingeing is increasingly normalised and consumption temporally disorganised. At the same time, neoliberal public health policy, and the wider 'health' entertainment media it legitimates, focuses on the promotion of 'correct' forms of consumer agency. Individuals who fail to manage consumption 'appropriately' are stigmatised. The growth of bulimia and BED can be related to the contradictory pressures that the food system and regime of corporal governance place on individuals. The paper also seeks to explore how the increased medicalisation and biomedicalisation of eating since the 1980s fits within a broader neoliberal governance strategy. By medicalising key social problems the neoliberal state depoliticises these issues. Medicalisation and biomedicalisation obscure the role of capitalism in generating these problems and encourage a focus on individual dysfunction.
Sociology of health illness