Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the relationship between bodies, knowledge and education in a community named as obesogenic by a State government. Using Ingold's work on embodied skills, I critique the assumption that following disciplines of already formed nutritional knowledge will result in the 'good life'.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the relationship between bodies, knowledge and education in a community identified as obesogenic by a State government and State led public health intervention. In public health circles and public understandings it is assumed that obesity results from lack of knowledge about the right things to eat or how to take care of oneself, leading to chronic conditions like diabetes and cardiovascular disease. It is thought that education will fill this knowledge lacunae, and most public health campaigns have education as the main platform of information dissemination to enact behavioural change. Based on long-standing ethnographic work in a community that experiences significant disadvantage, I explore the limits of nutrition education, and how constructing people as having deficit knowledge about the risks of obesity and chronic disease has the unwarranted effect of implying ignorance. Key to my analysis is Ingold's articulation of different modalities of education, one dominant mode which inducts people into rules and regulations of already pre-formed knowledge, and another which sees education as embodied learning that goes on in the doing of everyday environments. In conclusion, I argue that people do not learn the art of a good life through reflexive consciousness of what they should eat, but through practical engagements and unfolding of everyday improvisation, movement and sensory awareness of foods, eating and bodies.