Paper short abstract:

Through an analysis of an obesity prevention initiative in Guatemala, the paper suggests that the 'social determinants of health' framework risks remaking conditions of inequality by targeting a narrowly defined, determinant form of health.

Paper long abstract:

The prominent global health framework of 'social determinants of health' focuses on addressing 'the problem of inequality' by shifting attention away from individual and toward environmental conditions of disease. Through analysis of an obesity prevention initiative in Guatemala, the paper suggests that despite this shift, the social determinants framework risks remaking conditions of inequality that it purports to oppose by prioritizing - and targeting - a narrowly defined form of health. The paper illustrates how this framework might benefit from the methods of praxiography. Whereas 'social determinants' enacts health as the outcome of a diverse social and environmental assemblage, praxiography - the writing of practices - recognizes the malleability and fluidity of the 'object' of health. I close by advocating for the importance of descriptive politics - that is, politics that make space for indeterminacy - rather than the prescriptive politics deployed in the field of global health's framing of 'the social' as 'determinant.'