Abigail Saguy | University of California, Los Angeles (original) (raw)

Uploads

Papers by Abigail Saguy

Sociological Forum, 2008

In recent years, the “obesity epidemic” has emerged as a putative public health crisis. This arti... more In recent years, the “obesity epidemic” has emerged as a putative public health crisis. This article examines the interconnected role of medical science and news reporting in shaping the way obesity is framed as a social problem. Drawing on a sample of scientific publications on weight and health, and press releases and news reporting on these publications, we compare and contrast social problem frames in medical science and news reporting. We find substantial overlap in science and news reporting, but the news media do dramatize more than the studies on which they are reporting and are more likely than the original science to highlight individual blame for weight. This is partly due to the news media’s tendency to report more heavily on the most alarmist and individual‐blaming scientific studies. We find some evidence that press releases also shape which articles receive media coverage and how they are framed.

Despite growing academic interest in political and cultural globalization, sociologists have fail... more Despite growing academic interest in political and cultural globalization, sociologists have failed to systematically account for the factors that favor cross-national convergence or divergence in the form or content of public political debates in news media. This article uses two original data sets on American and French news reporting on immigration and sexual harassment to test the effects of four

Contexts, 2006

ABSTRACT Stanton Glantz, professor of medicine and director of the Center for Tobacco Control Res... more ABSTRACT Stanton Glantz, professor of medicine and director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at University of California at San Francisco, is well-known for his Cigarette Papers, a collection of damning internal memos that aided anti-tobacco litigation by showing that the tobacco industry knew about the cancer-causing and addictive properties of cigarettes as far back as the early 1960s and were engaged in a sophisticated disinformation campaign. Recently, Professor Glantz has been pulled into scientific debates over the association between obesity and mortality.

Journal of Health Politics Policy and Law, 2005

Despite recent and growing media attention surrounding obesity in the United States, the so-calle... more Despite recent and growing media attention surrounding obesity in the United States, the so-called obesity epidemic remains a highly contested scientific and social fact. This article examines the contemporary obesity debate through systematic examination of the claims and claimants involved in the controversy. We argue that four primary groups-antiobesity researchers, antiobesity activists, fat acceptance researchers, and fat acceptance activists-are at the forefront of this controversy and that these groups are fundamentally engaged in framing contests over the nature and consequences of excess body weight. While members of the fat acceptance groups embrace a body diversity frame, presenting fatness as a natural and largely inevitable form of diversity, members of the antiobesity camp frame higher weights as risky behavior akin to smoking, implying that body weight is under personal control and that people have a moral and medical responsibility to manage their weight. Both groups sometimes frame obesity as an illness, which limits blame by suggesting that weight is biologically or genetically determined but simultaneously stigmatizes fat bodies as diseased. While the antiobesity camp frames obesity as an epidemic to increase public attention, fat acceptance activists argue that concern over obesity is distracting attention from a host of more important health issues for fat Americans. We examine the strategies claimants use to establish their own credibility or discredit their opponents, and explain how the fat acceptance movement has exploited structural opportunities and cultural resources created by AIDS activism and feminism to wield some influence over U.S. public health approaches. We conclude that notions of morality play a central role in the controversy over obesity, as in many medical disputes, and illustrate how medical arguments about body weight can be used to stymie rights claims and justify morality-based fears.

Social Problems, 2010

Drawing on analyses of American and French news reports on "overweight" and "obesity," this artic... more Drawing on analyses of American and French news reports on "overweight" and "obesity," this article examines how national context-including position in a global field of nation states, as well as different national politics and culture-shapes the framing of social problems. As has been shown in previous research, news reports from France-the economically dominated but culturally dominant nation of the two-discuss the United States more often than vice versa, typically in a negative way. Our contribution is to highlight the flexibility of anti-American rhetoric, which provides powerful ammunition for a variety of social problem frames. Specifically, depending on elite interests, French news reports may invoke anti-American rhetoric to reject a given phenomenon as a veritable public problem, or they may use such rhetoric to drum up concern over an issue. We further show how diverse cultural factors shape news reporting. Despite earlier work showing that a group-based discrimination frame is more common in the United States than in France, we find that the U.S. news sample is no more likely to discuss weight-based discrimination than the French news sample. We attribute this to specific barriers to this particular framing, namely the widespread view that body size is a behavior, akin to smoking, rather than an ascribed characteristic, like race. This discussion points, more generally, to some of the mechanisms limiting the diffusion of frames across social problems.

International Journal of Epidemiology, 2005

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2008

The past decade has witnessed a cultural turn in sociolegal analysis. This article attempts to re... more The past decade has witnessed a cultural turn in sociolegal analysis. This article attempts to respond to two questions. First, what do law and society scholars mean when they make a cultural argument about the law? And second, what are the recent developments in cultural legal ...

Journal of International Women's Studies, 2001

2010: Vol. 57, Issue 2 by Abigail Saguy

This article examines how widely shared cultural values shape social problem construction and, in... more This article examines how widely shared cultural values shape social problem construction and, in turn, can reproduce social inequality. To do so, we draw on a comparative case study of American news reporting on eating disorders and overweight/obesity between 1995 and 2005. In the contemporary United States, thinness is associated with high social status and taken as evidence of moral virtue. In contrast, fatness is linked to low status and seen as a sign of sloth and gluttony. Drawing on an original data set of news reports, we examine how such social and moral meanings of body size inform news reporting on eating disorders and overweight. We find that the news media in our sample typically discuss how a host of complex factors beyond individual control contribute to anorexia and bulimia. In that anorexics and bulimics are typically portrayed as young white women or girls, this reinforces cultural images of young white female victims. In contrast, the media predominantly attribute overweight to bad individual choices and tend to treat binge eating disorder as ordinary and blameworthy over-eating. In that the poor and minorities are more likely to be heavy, such reporting reinforces social stereotypes of fat people, ethnic minorities, and the poor as out of control and lazy. While appreciation for bigger female bodies among African Americans is hailed as protecting against thinness-oriented eating disorders, this same cultural preference is partially blamed for overweight and obesity among African American women and girls.

Sociological Forum, 2008

In recent years, the “obesity epidemic” has emerged as a putative public health crisis. This arti... more In recent years, the “obesity epidemic” has emerged as a putative public health crisis. This article examines the interconnected role of medical science and news reporting in shaping the way obesity is framed as a social problem. Drawing on a sample of scientific publications on weight and health, and press releases and news reporting on these publications, we compare and contrast social problem frames in medical science and news reporting. We find substantial overlap in science and news reporting, but the news media do dramatize more than the studies on which they are reporting and are more likely than the original science to highlight individual blame for weight. This is partly due to the news media’s tendency to report more heavily on the most alarmist and individual‐blaming scientific studies. We find some evidence that press releases also shape which articles receive media coverage and how they are framed.

Despite growing academic interest in political and cultural globalization, sociologists have fail... more Despite growing academic interest in political and cultural globalization, sociologists have failed to systematically account for the factors that favor cross-national convergence or divergence in the form or content of public political debates in news media. This article uses two original data sets on American and French news reporting on immigration and sexual harassment to test the effects of four

Contexts, 2006

ABSTRACT Stanton Glantz, professor of medicine and director of the Center for Tobacco Control Res... more ABSTRACT Stanton Glantz, professor of medicine and director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at University of California at San Francisco, is well-known for his Cigarette Papers, a collection of damning internal memos that aided anti-tobacco litigation by showing that the tobacco industry knew about the cancer-causing and addictive properties of cigarettes as far back as the early 1960s and were engaged in a sophisticated disinformation campaign. Recently, Professor Glantz has been pulled into scientific debates over the association between obesity and mortality.

Journal of Health Politics Policy and Law, 2005

Despite recent and growing media attention surrounding obesity in the United States, the so-calle... more Despite recent and growing media attention surrounding obesity in the United States, the so-called obesity epidemic remains a highly contested scientific and social fact. This article examines the contemporary obesity debate through systematic examination of the claims and claimants involved in the controversy. We argue that four primary groups-antiobesity researchers, antiobesity activists, fat acceptance researchers, and fat acceptance activists-are at the forefront of this controversy and that these groups are fundamentally engaged in framing contests over the nature and consequences of excess body weight. While members of the fat acceptance groups embrace a body diversity frame, presenting fatness as a natural and largely inevitable form of diversity, members of the antiobesity camp frame higher weights as risky behavior akin to smoking, implying that body weight is under personal control and that people have a moral and medical responsibility to manage their weight. Both groups sometimes frame obesity as an illness, which limits blame by suggesting that weight is biologically or genetically determined but simultaneously stigmatizes fat bodies as diseased. While the antiobesity camp frames obesity as an epidemic to increase public attention, fat acceptance activists argue that concern over obesity is distracting attention from a host of more important health issues for fat Americans. We examine the strategies claimants use to establish their own credibility or discredit their opponents, and explain how the fat acceptance movement has exploited structural opportunities and cultural resources created by AIDS activism and feminism to wield some influence over U.S. public health approaches. We conclude that notions of morality play a central role in the controversy over obesity, as in many medical disputes, and illustrate how medical arguments about body weight can be used to stymie rights claims and justify morality-based fears.

Social Problems, 2010

Drawing on analyses of American and French news reports on "overweight" and "obesity," this artic... more Drawing on analyses of American and French news reports on "overweight" and "obesity," this article examines how national context-including position in a global field of nation states, as well as different national politics and culture-shapes the framing of social problems. As has been shown in previous research, news reports from France-the economically dominated but culturally dominant nation of the two-discuss the United States more often than vice versa, typically in a negative way. Our contribution is to highlight the flexibility of anti-American rhetoric, which provides powerful ammunition for a variety of social problem frames. Specifically, depending on elite interests, French news reports may invoke anti-American rhetoric to reject a given phenomenon as a veritable public problem, or they may use such rhetoric to drum up concern over an issue. We further show how diverse cultural factors shape news reporting. Despite earlier work showing that a group-based discrimination frame is more common in the United States than in France, we find that the U.S. news sample is no more likely to discuss weight-based discrimination than the French news sample. We attribute this to specific barriers to this particular framing, namely the widespread view that body size is a behavior, akin to smoking, rather than an ascribed characteristic, like race. This discussion points, more generally, to some of the mechanisms limiting the diffusion of frames across social problems.

International Journal of Epidemiology, 2005

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2008

The past decade has witnessed a cultural turn in sociolegal analysis. This article attempts to re... more The past decade has witnessed a cultural turn in sociolegal analysis. This article attempts to respond to two questions. First, what do law and society scholars mean when they make a cultural argument about the law? And second, what are the recent developments in cultural legal ...

Journal of International Women's Studies, 2001

This article examines how widely shared cultural values shape social problem construction and, in... more This article examines how widely shared cultural values shape social problem construction and, in turn, can reproduce social inequality. To do so, we draw on a comparative case study of American news reporting on eating disorders and overweight/obesity between 1995 and 2005. In the contemporary United States, thinness is associated with high social status and taken as evidence of moral virtue. In contrast, fatness is linked to low status and seen as a sign of sloth and gluttony. Drawing on an original data set of news reports, we examine how such social and moral meanings of body size inform news reporting on eating disorders and overweight. We find that the news media in our sample typically discuss how a host of complex factors beyond individual control contribute to anorexia and bulimia. In that anorexics and bulimics are typically portrayed as young white women or girls, this reinforces cultural images of young white female victims. In contrast, the media predominantly attribute overweight to bad individual choices and tend to treat binge eating disorder as ordinary and blameworthy over-eating. In that the poor and minorities are more likely to be heavy, such reporting reinforces social stereotypes of fat people, ethnic minorities, and the poor as out of control and lazy. While appreciation for bigger female bodies among African Americans is hailed as protecting against thinness-oriented eating disorders, this same cultural preference is partially blamed for overweight and obesity among African American women and girls.