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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores what it may mean for a policy program to be sensitive to the local specificities of the problem it targets. Detailing the ‘community approach’ of an overweight prevention programme, I analyse the translations between participants’ varied concerns and the policy’s general target.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores what it may mean in practice for a policy program to be caring, as in sensitive to the local specificities of the problem it targets. Drawing on material semiotics, I analyse practices linked to the obesity prevention programme of a large municipality in the Netherlands. The programme's aim is that by 2030 all children in the city will have a healthy weight. Professionals working in health care, social welfare and urban planning are mobilised, and so too are neighbourhoods. Rather than employing top-down solutions to pre-set problems, the program seeks to facilitate bottom-up health initiatives that emerge from the situations, concerns and abilities of the targeted population. In the programme's 'community approach', overweight emerges in close relation with other forms of suffering such as poverty and social isolation. Grounded in the idea that health is more than physical normality, the programme facilitates spaces for caring, such as cooking and walking groups, where a range of 'goods' may be fostered, including fun, togetherness and self-confidence. At the same time, participating in the programme (and receiving public money) comes with certain rules: volunteers must follow certain procedures, attend trainings and evaluate their projects. I analyse the translations between the participants' varied concerns and the policy's general target of decreasing the prevalence of obesity. Such translations are hardly straightforward. They depend on quite particular citizens, able to bridge gaps between different professionals and varied other groups, identify needs and solutions, tinker with material constraints, and care for themselves and others.