This paper documents how health is storied into existence by "obesity discourse" to become part of the "natural attitude" towards the health of individuals or populations. We draw attention to some of the major policy documentation influencing thinking on "health" and school health education in the UK over recent…

This paper examines the inexorable rise of "health" as regulative discourse, highlighting its class and cultural dimensions. With reference to the policy content of recent obesity reports, analysis suggests that contemporary concerns around obesity are but a modern variant of earlier eighteenth and nineteenth century child saving crusades whose…

This article discusses the social fabrication of risk and ill health in the United Kingdom and how it affect the physical education curriculum and physical education teachers. It is now well over 60 years since the publication in Britain of the Board of Education?s (1933) "Syllabus For Physical Training For Schools." It was a remarkable…

On 16 January 2002, the United Kingdom House of Commons Select Committee published a report entitled "Tackling Obesity in England". Drawing on insights from the work of Bernstein, Bourdieu and Foucault, this article will suggest that the report provides an example "par excellence" of the way in which "the body" (our…