Week 4 Nutrition apartheid and the geography of obesity

Apartheid is a practice and policy of separating people according to race most closely associated with South Africa prior to 1991. The Apple Dictionary writes, "Adopted by the successful Afrikaner National Party as a slogan in the 1948 election, apartheid extended and institutionalized existing racial segregation." Today social scientists and humanities scholars use the term to describe cases of segregation that occur because of social hierarchies.  In urban places with more nonwhite groups, stores are often more expensive, there tend to be fewer  grocery stores and there is more likely to be polluted land unfit for urban agriculture or zoning against it. ‘Nutritional apartheid’ (Garrett, 2008) is a term that speaks to the consequences of  racial hierarchy in US society whereas a term like 'food desert' does not. But the term, and geography more generally, is about a relationship between spaces and social relationships. Nutritional apartheid points to not just a lack of grocery stores but the way  life is made more difficult in many ways for nonwhite groups, which has an impact on how people are able to nourish their bodies and whether they become targets for intervention.

Guthman, Julie. 2011. Weighing in: obesity, food justice and the limits of capitalism. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ch. 2 How do we know obesity is a problem?  

Herrick C (2008) To the west and east of Interstate-35: obesity, philanthropic entrepreneurialism, and the delineation of risk in Austin, Texas. Environment and Planning A 40: 2715-2733.


The Blaisdell YMCA in Minneapolis featured a box for discarding our 'fat pants' and showcased this congealed hunk of fat (really?) at the entrance. Julie Guthman's new book, Weighing In, "calls into question the ubiquitous claim that 'good food' will solve the social and health dilemmas of today..." according to Ohio State geographer Becky Mansfield. The chapter you'll read explores how, through some statistical leaps of faith, a fascinated revulsion for the socially created 'abnormal' body and some circular reasoning, this society has come up with what many call the 'obesity epidemic'. Claire Herrick's paper explores a case in which Latinos in Austin TX were assumed to be at risk for obesity as a consequence of presumed 'bad habits' making their neighborhoods spaces of intervention for fitness and 'better' eating. Discuss what surprised you in these papers. Try to make connections between these readings and previous ones.

Listen/read this Minnesota Public Radio story on Latino children and obesity.  What are the ways this society usually chooses to address obesity? Listening to Samantha's story, why do those standard approaches stop short of addressing fundamental issues? Relate the story to Herrick's paper.