Event: Illness, Obesity and the Rise of Health Populism
Date: Wednesday 4 October 2023
Time: 13:00 - 15:00
Venue: Lecture Theatre 1 (LT1)
Rates of chronic illness and obesity have risen along with neoliberal policies which foster poor work conditions; environmental toxicity; and unregulated 'junk' food sales. Neoliberal healthcare ideology places blame on non-conforming bodies, leading to stigma and distrust within the mainstream system. Catie Gressier draws on ethnographic research with Australian Paleo dieters to argue that health populism emerges from a sense of collective crisis, and the rejection of the elite who are seen as responsible for creating or failing to prevent this.
The Paleo Diet movement opposes modern societal issues and mainstream medicine by offering 'common sense' solutions rooted in an idyllic past. Populist Paleo leaders favour anecdotes over evidence, using social media to connect with and profit from anxious consumers, mirroring trends in epistemological populism from the anti-vax movement to climate change denial. These beliefs are critical to understanding the potential impact of disregarding science on individual through to planetary health.
Catie Gressier is an Australian Research Council Fellow in the School of Agriculture and Environment at the University of Western Australia. A cultural anthropologist with regional expertise in Australia and southern Africa, her research explores foodways, interspecies relations, tourism, and health and illness.
Her first book, At Home in the Okavango, examines emplacement and belonging among the white citizens of northwest Botswana, while her second book, Illness, Identity and Taboo among Australian Paleo Dieters, explores the body as a site through which neoliberal policies and practices are played out and contested.
Catie is currently researching heritage breed livestock farming and agroecology in the climate change era. She is a Director of the Rare Breeds Trust of Australia, an Editorial Board Member of Anthropological Forum, and the Coordinator of the Ecology, People, Place research network.
