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A burgeoning literature explores the putative problem of ‘excess’ weight or fatness, including the management of spoiled identity. A separate literature re-frames health-related stigma with reference to macro-social structures and logics within globalized capitalism. This paper aims to promote further dialogue on such matters among social theorists of health and critics of the war on obesity. To this end, the paper first outlines Goffman’s influential legacy in ‘the fat field’ before extending Scambler’s ‘jigsaw model’ to weight-related stigma and efforts to reduce it. Informed by critical realist tenets, this sociological model furthers the analysis of stigma as a process entwined with macro-structural relations (e.g. class, command, gender and ethnicity), neoliberal ideology and scapegoating. In conclusion, the paper supports calls for a post-individualistic account of stigma, underscoring the relevance of such thinking when furthering the obesity debate, critical social theory and health.

This article offers a sociological study of postnatal depression recovery blogs. Such media render ‘failing’ and ‘ailing’ publicly accountable in response to the performative demands of motherhood and the health role. Drawing from nine Anglophone blogs and classic and contemporary scholarship (e.g. on cycles of redemption, the medicalisation of cyberspace), it explores three main themes: (1) guilt, (2) purification and (3) redemption. Analysing these themes provides virtual ethnographic insights on the public drama of medicalised maternal distress. Critically, the limitations of medicalised rhetoric are also considered in a postfeminist context of stigma, deviance, shame and mother blame. Finally, the limitations of this study plus possibilities for future research, policy and social change are highlighted.

Despite considerable contestation, ‘excess’ weight/fatness is commonly framed as fatal and in need of behavioural interventions. This article reviews literature which places a question mark over or challenges dietary approaches to weight-loss before critically discussing an alternative weight-inclusive intervention, Health At Every Size®, which is filtering into mainstream discourse while also becoming increasingly fractious. After discussing principles, tensions, resonance and controversies, we reflect on the politics of health and the need to reject the all-too-common definition of weight/fatness as a proxy for individuals’ unhealthy lifestyles and personal irresponsibility. In conclusion, we tease out some of the implications of our discussion for social theorizing of health and efforts to rethink the war on obesity.

Focusing upon scapegoating in post-crash Ireland, this article considers a pervasive political process that is protective of powerful interests and the status quo following the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. Drawing from group conflict theory and framing analysis as part of a broader critical realist take on society, we consider how blame has been placed on myriad targets, ranging from a collective 'we who went a bit mad with borrowing' to more specific groups such as public sector workers, the unemployed, single mothers and immigrants. In conclusion, we underscore the need for sociology to assert its relevance by challenging such processes and defend civil society in a capitalist world-system that is in structural crisis.

This paper critically engages with dominant obesity discourses, making particular reference to the perceived epidemic of 'excess' weight among men in England. It expands upon arguments written for the Men's Health Forum during the run up to their recent conference on 'tackling male weight problems'. The science legitimating the war against fat is questioned as well as arguments offered by those playing a key role in constructing this as a massive public health problem. A sociologically imaginative approach to the obesity debate is encouraged in line with a critical realist appreciation of health and its determinants.[PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

Debating obesity can be difficult. For example, critiquing obesity discourse might be (mis)read as a criticism of individual doctors, or a failure to appreciate public health, which ostensibly seeks to avoid victim blaming with its focus on ‘the obesogenic environment’. In extending the obesity debate and politicising fatness and health (practice) more generally, this article responds to such criticisms as expressed by a ‘sceptic’ who has otherwise sought to challenge obesity science. This, in turn, helps to ‘clear some ground’ for critical weight studies and alternative clinical paradigms. After engaging relevant literature and repudiating the misrecognition of some of my own research, the article concludes with some reflections on how the debate might proceed amidst the flak and ‘friendly fire’.

Physicians and other clinicians are being urged to regulate their weight and fight fat. This and a second paper (Monaghan, 2010) offer a qualitative analysis of an online debate on this issue. A webcast video editorial, roundtable discussion and over 200 postings on Medscape provide rich data for analysing various discursive framings. This paper introduces the online debate, describes the video editorial and roundtable discussion. Engaging members’ subsequent postings, one particular framing is then explored: the acquiescent. Here contributors disparaged overweight/obesity/fatness and personal (in)actions assumed to cause unwanted weight-gain, while stressing individual responsibility for ‘correcting’ this. Acquiescence comprised three main discursive strands: ensuring occupational credibility, the health rationale and rejecting other clinicians’ excuses. Analytically, these data are interpreted within a framework that is critical of obesity discourse, rather than critical of individuals who risk being discredited as overweight, obese or too fat.

Clinicians are being urged personally to fight fat lest their credibility, health and effectiveness are threatened. Contributing to burgeoning critical weight studies, this paper extends the analysis presented in ‘Physician Heal Thyself’, Part 1 (Monaghan, 2010). Drawing from over 200 postings from an Internet site, Medscape , on the subject of ‘overweight’ clinicians, this paper explores three types of accountability: the excusable, the critically compliant and the justifiably resistant. Centrally, this paper critiques obesity discourse, which encircles clinicians’ embodied identities, and points the way towards an approach that makes sociological and clinical sense.

Using embodied sociology, literature on overweight/obesity/fatness and qualitative data generated during a study of masculinities and weight-related issues, this paper explores various accounts that help bridge the gap between slim ideals and bulky realities. As well as bringing together and categorizing weight-related accounts according to their status as justifications or excuses, two additional aligning actions are discussed: contrition and repudiation. These concepts are grounded, respectively, in a discussion of intentional weight loss and size activism. The value of re-reading classic social theory in a corporeal light is underscored and qualitative data on male embodiment are presented. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

tVarious myths or fabrications centre the problems of modern masculinity and male bodies while detracting attention from broader sociological dynamics. After lamenting the general tendency to discredit groups of men and boys on the basis of negative cultured stereotypes, this article is organized into two main sections. First, reference is made to critical writings on \"the obesity myth\" and the war on fat as a gendered project. Second, it offers a lens on the broader social context which impacts upon people's life-chances, health and wellbeing regardless of their weight/fatness and assumed aberrant behaviours. In so doing, connections are made with calls within medical sociology and critical studies on men's health not to neglect embodied social structures and broader material conditions of existence. Such thinking, comprising efforts to theorize rising inequalities, serves as a point of contrast to a \"narrowly logical\" focus on \"deficient\" male bodies. Failure to think critically about such matters, it will be argued, could result in the (unwitting) reproduction of social inequity.