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Managing Uncertainty: Obesity Discourses and

Physical Education in a Risk Society

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 Studies in Philosophy and Education 20: 535–549, 2001.
535
© 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Managing Uncertainty: Obesity Discourses and

Physical Education in a Risk Society

MICHAEL GARD1 and JAN WRIGHT2

1 Allen House, Human Movement Studies Unit, Charles Sturt University, Bathurst NSW, Australia;
2 Faculty of Education, University of Wollongong, Wollongong NSW, Australia

Abstract. This paper considers the role of physical education researchers within current public con-
cerns about body shape and weight. Using Ulrich Beck’s notion of ‘risk’ it examines how certainty
about children, obesity, exercise and health is produced in the contexts of ‘expert’ knowledge and
recontextualised in the academic and professional physical education literature. It is argued that the
unquestioning acceptance of the obesity discourses in physical education helps to construct anxieties
about the body, which are detrimental to students and silences alternative ways of thinking and doing
physical education.

Key words: body, certainty, health, knowledge, obesity discourse, physical education, risk

Health, Healthism and Physical Education

Since its inception as part of the school curriculum in the English speaking world,
school physical education has always been associated with the improvement of
‘health.’ How ‘health’ has been constituted has varied over time and for different
social groups. As Kirk and Spiller (1994) have pointed out, the espoused health
goals of physical training/education have played a major role in providing the
means to closely monitor and regulate children’s bodies in state schools. In the
19th and early 20th centuries this was through postural and other medico-physical
assessments. Since the late 1970s the prominence of a health related fitness
(HRF) approach has produced new monitoring procedures, such as fitness testing,
measurements of weight and other indicators of body size and shape, which have
been incorporated into teaching practices in physical education, often with little
regard for their effects on individual children (Burns, 1993), or for the messages
they suggest about bodies, weight and normality.
In the 1950s research on cardiovascular disease (CVD) which linked heart
attacks to a sedentary lifestyle provided physical educators with a source of
legitimation which has since been thoroughly mined. As Kirk (1990) has argued,
physical education looked to medico-scientific research to enhance the status of the
subject and to provide legitimacy in educational contexts where the body/physical
was regarded as separate from, and less important, than the mind/intellect. The
536 MICHAEL GARD AND JAN WRIGHT

biomedical research which followed pointed to a range of associations between

inactivity and illhealth including the prevention of what were to become known as
‘lifestyle diseases’, particularly cardiovascular disease. A ‘sedentary’ lifestyle was
established as a ‘risk factor.’ However, what constitutes a ‘sedentary’ lifestyle or
‘adequate’ activity has changed over time and is still far from clear. For example,
the duration and intensity of exercise that a person needs to do in order to accrue
health benefits remains controversial (Lee and Paffenbarger, 1997; Pate, 1995).
For many physical educators the association between inactivity and illhealth
provided the means to argue for an approach to physical education that focused
on addressing this problem. Tinning and Kirk (1991) even go so far as to suggest
it was in part a response to a perceived threat of irrelevance. This approach, vari-
ously known as Health Related Fitness (HRF) or Health Based Physical Education
(HBPE) is premised on the assumptions that there is a positive relationship between
physical activity and health, that participation in physical activity by children and
adults is declining and that this has dire consequences for their health. It also
assumed that physical education has a primary responsibility to address this decline
by providing opportunities for vigorous activity during lessons and by providing
physical skills and positive experiences which are likely to increase students’
participation in physical activity now and in the future.
HBPE has many proponents in Europe, UK, USA, Australia and New Zealand
(see for instance, Almond, 1983; Corbin and Pangrazi, 1993; Dodd, 1982). There
are variations on the assumptions listed above, with some adherents supporting
the need for fundamental movement skills as a basis for participation and others
arguing for more fitness based activities and some for both. Its logic is hard to fault,
particularly in a context where physical education as a profession and discipline
seems to be constantly searching for a definitive purpose (Stroot, 1994). However,
it has been criticised by a number of writers (for example, Colquhuon, 1990;
Tinning and Kirk, 1991), for the ways in which it uncritically supports the triplex
of exercise=fitness=health (where health is determined by body size and shape)
and is embedded in a discourse of ‘healthism’ which constitutes health in terms of
a moral imperative of self-control (Crawford, 1980). It is this approach to physical
education that relies most heavily on epidemiological and biomedical research to
legitimate its research agenda, its presence in the curriculum and its pedagogical
practices.
The HBPE approach to physical education received a further impetus in the
1990s with the increase in academic and popular interest in the so-called ‘obesity
epidemic’ (Flegal, 1999). According to Colquhuon (1990), prior to 1960 obesity
was rarely mentioned in the medical literature. However by 1981 concern had
grown considerably. Comparative studies in the 1980s pointed to the increasing
weight of the ‘average’ woman and man in populations in the UK, North America
and Australia. By the 1990s a preoccupation with overweight/obesity dominated
many governments’ health concerns (Jutel, forthcoming 2001). For instance, in the
United States, Healthy People 2000 puts the prevention of obesity at the top of its
MANAGING UNCERTAINTY 537

list of health concerns. In Australia, Acting on Australia’s Weight: A strategic plan

of the prevention of overweight and obesity (NHMRC, 1997) identifies overweight
and obesity ‘as key risk indicators of preventable morbidity and mortality’ (p. 2).
It cites the costs to the health system and to individuals as the major reasons for
concern.
In this paper we are particularly interested in pointing to the implications of
this preoccupation with obesity for physical education. On one hand, we argue that
physical education is both implicated in producing and reproducing the obesity
discourses and their effects. On the other, we contend that physical education
continues to legitimate itself on the basis of claims about obesity and overweight
which are not only shaky but ethically irresponsible; that their effects on students
and the public are detrimental rather than productive of health; and that it serves
our purposes as a profession, to accept these discourses uncritically because of the
resources and recognition we accrue.
To achieve our ends we have examined the ways in which obesity discourses
become uncritically recontextualised both within and between levels of prac-
tice (Bernstein, 1986, 1996). Following a discussion of the theoretical premises
deployed in the paper, we examine the ways in which the obesity discourses are
constituted by expert practice in the reporting of research in academic journals.
Following Beck (1992a, 1992b), our main concern here is the erasure of uncertainty
with respect to knowledge about the body, body weight, exercise and health, and
the construction of certainty where none seems justified. We examine how this
‘expert’ knowledge is reconstituted in professional and academic physical educa-
tion literature. This process should not be imagined as one that is linear. Rather,
media coverage of the ‘expert’ knowledge produced in reports serves to generate a
public/popular discourse which speaks to politicians and funding bodies about the
levels of community concern generated around the issue and so motivates further
discussion – some of which contests the dominant discourse (see Atrens, 2000) but
most of which serves to confirm it and spread its effects.

Regimes of Truth in Risk Societies

Beck (1992a, 1992b) has argued that western democracies have become ‘risk
societies’. Whereas in the past we may have been able to make distinctions between
social groupings based on their ability to accumulate wealth or ‘goods,’ Beck
(1992a) argues that new divisions are appearing which cohere around people’s
ability to avoid risks or ‘bads.’ It is important to point out that Beck’s work has
explicitly dealt with global environmental concerns and the spectre of what he calls
the environmental ‘mega-hazards’ of industrialisation. Beck (1992a) argues that all
of us, rich and poor, face risks which our societies cannot insure against, such as
those associated with nuclear accidents and that more and more of our energy is
devoted to avoiding risks.
538 MICHAEL GARD AND JAN WRIGHT

If risks cannot be adequately insured against, then they must be managed in

other ways. In the case of nuclear accidents and global warming, Beck (1992a) has
shown how corporations and governments have resorted to relying on ‘experts’ to
allay people’s concerns about risks, thus rendering potentially difficult and incon-
venient debates about insurance and compensation unnecessary. In a broader sense,
these conditions have served to erode public confidence in modernist institutions,
such as, governments, industries, corporations and universities, and raise doubts
about the very notion of ‘progress.’
One of the effects of this has been to alter the conditions under which scientific
enterprises proceed. Drawing on this work, Reddy (1996) has suggested that these
conditions position the expert as a crucial focus of trust in a modernising process
that may seem less and less trustworthy. In effect, the role of the expert in a ‘risk
society’ is to claim knowledge, expertise and an ability to control that which seems
to be out of control. The important point is that within a risk society, uncertainty
is dangerous because it exposes the degree to which modernist institutions have
over-stepped the limits of their own knowledge. Under these conditions uncertainty
becomes a scandal and the enemy of the modernising process (Beck, 1992b). By
managing uncertainty, the expert becomes central to the construction of a sense of
control over the risks we live with.
In public health discourse, the management of uncertainty is accomplished by
the quantification of risk through population studies that calculate the likelihood
of a phenomenon. Citing Hacking (1990), Lupton (1995, p. 78) describes risk
as depending “on a belief in law-like mathematical regularities in the population,
itself dependent upon the collection of data and its tabulation.” Epidemiology and
biomedical research become the source of ‘expert’ knowledge in this context and
population studies the only source of valid knowledge about public health. These
identify ‘risk factors’ that effect populations and identify ‘populations at risk.’ The
perceptions of risk are however socially constructed – as Ewald points out (quoted
in Lupton, 1995, p. 79) “nothing is a risk itself until it is judged to be a risk.” This
identification or risk is dialectic between expertise and social values and political
and economic imperatives.
Fundamental to the notion of risk is that by so naming the risk it can be
managed, and uncertainty reduced. By understanding the lines of causality, one
can act rationally to avoid it. Lupton (1995) points to the way in which health
promotion ‘risks’ are managed by setting targets for the reduction of mortality
or morbidity in particular populations (most at risk from a disease). For instance,
in the United States the Surgeon General has set goals of active participation in
physical activity for 75% of high school students by 2000 (cited in Savage and
Scott, 1998). Once the risk factors identified with morbidity and mortality have
been identified the assumption is that targets can be reached “if only the correct
advice is taken” (Lupton, 1995, p. 81). What is not acknowledged is the limited
relevance of population predictions to predicting ill health for individuals (Atrens,
2000; Lupton, 1995)
MANAGING UNCERTAINTY 539

The ‘Obesity Epidemic’

In this paper, we propose that it is possible to employ the notion of ‘risk’ and ‘risk
management’ to the human body and those who would claim knowledge about it.
We argue that the so-called ‘obesity epidemic’ (Flegal, 1999), which some now
claim to be a world wide phenomena, is an example of a field of inquiry in which
uncertainty appears untenable and in which a range of experts claim a level of
expertise which seems hubristic at best.
Obesity is an interesting condition because it is related to the ‘success’ of the so-
called ‘developed’ nations and hints at the tensions between human bodies and the
project of modernity. That is, despite the ability of ‘developed’ nations to control
and waste a disproportionate percentage of the world’s food, their citizens are not
free from anxiety about food, albeit anxiety of a very particular kind. Employing
Beck’s terms, we might say that obesity has been constructed as an undesirable
side effect of modern western life and adds to the growing list of risks that this
kind of life is charged with generating.
Unlike Beck, our concern in this paper is less with the overtly political deploy-
ment of experts by embattled institutions, but with the ways in which certainty
about children, obesity, exercise and health is produced in a variety of institu-
tional contexts, and the implications of this process for physical education. Despite
an absence of scientific certainty about the causes, incidence, consequences and
treatment of over-weight and obesity, the field of physical education continues
to operate as if certainty existed. We argue that these unquestioned beliefs
have negative effects on the ways in which physical education and exercise are
researched and taught, both in schools and universities.

Obesity Discourses Recontextualised

The work of Bernstein (1986, 1996) on pedagogic discourse is useful in under-
standing how discourses from outside the field of education become recontextual-
ised to serve educational purposes. According to Bernstein, pedagogic discourse
has no particular discourse of its own. Rather, “it is a principle for appropriating
other discourses and for bringing them into a special relation with one another
for the purposes of their selective transmission and acquisition” (Bernstein, 1986:
p. 210). By this process, pedagogic discourse becomes constituted as a specific
and complex discourse (as in physical education) which is concerned with the
organisation, and implementation of a particular curriculum area.
The expert knowledge from the primary field of knowledge production, that is
biomedical research, is recontextualised to the secondary field as physical educa-
tion researchers and educationalists appropriate it. It is taken up, refocussed and
relocated in ways which make invisible its original complexities and contradictions
and exclude contesting positions – an imaginary or mediated discourse removed
from its original “social base, position and power relations” is created (Bernstein,
1996, p. 53). As such, it is more difficult to contest. Obesity as a health problem
540 MICHAEL GARD AND JAN WRIGHT

which is both caused by inadequate amounts of physical activity and which can be
treated and prevented by increasing participation in physical activity is reproduced
as ‘given’ knowledge. This ‘fact’ is then used to argue for the need for physical
education in general and for specific kinds of physical education in particular.

Expert Knowledge: The Biomedical Field

An analysis of biomedical research demonstrates that there is a great deal
of uncertainty about the levels of obesity/overweight, the relationship between
obesity/overweight and health, and the efficacy of physical activity in preventing or
treating obesity (see Atrens, 2000; Flegal, 1999; Parsons et al., 1999 for reviews).
We have chosen to illustrate these points by focusing on a particular instance of
knowledge production, the special November 1999 issue of the American College
of Sports Medicine’s journal, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. This
issue presented the findings of the ‘Physical Activity and Obesity: American
College of Sports Medicine Consensus Conference.’ As such, it provides a striking
evidence of the way in which uncertainty makes way for certainty, particularly
where achieving ‘consensus’ seems to be the objective (Blair and Bouchard, 1999).
In opening the issue, Bouchard and Blair (1999, p. S498) suggest that:
. . . the body of knowledge on physical activity and relevant obesity outcomes
is extremely limited. There are few randomized clinical trials that have lasted
1 year or more, with reasonable statistical power, adequate monitoring of
intervention protocols, high levels of compliance, and proper measurement of
outcome variables. The net result is a general lack of a solid research data-
base regarding the role of physical activity in the prevention and treatment of
overweight and obesity as well as their comorbidities.
These comments are echoed throughout the issue. In her review of research into
overweight and obesity levels around the world, Flegal (1999, p. S512), argues
that we know ‘remarkably little’ about the causes of obesity. And despite claims
that childhood obesity is increasing (Campbell, 2000; Powell, 2000), Flegal notes
that studies of children are rare. In fact, Flegal cites only two examples in which
longitudinal comparisons of children are possible. The first of these, a single study
from Brazil, shows a small decrease in overweight (not obesity) amongst boys
aged four years and under (4.7% to 3.8%) and a similarly small increase amongst
girls (4.6% to 5.3%). The second involves the authors own work in the United
States which suggests more dramatic increases in overweight (again, not obesity)
amongst children from ages six through to seventeen.
While demonstrating that far more data regarding adults exist, and that a number
of studies around the world show increases for men and women, Flegal notes
that these increases are neither universal nor uniform. While some studies show
relatively large increases, others show much smaller changes. In a handful of
countries, the research reports no change at all. She then argues that despite an
MANAGING UNCERTAINTY 541

increase in obesity “(t)he net health implications of the increases are not completely
clear” (p. S511). In a number of countries hypertension, elevated cholesterol,
cardiovascular mortality, and average blood pressure have dropped as obesity has
gone up. In addition, in the United States, cardiovascular risk factors remain high
amongst the non-obese and non-overweight.
Flegal goes on to comment that “(a)lthough there has been considerable specu-
lation about the reasons for the increases in the United States and in some
other countries, solid data are lacking” (p. S511). However, she does note the
apparent influence of socio-economics on obesity levels, particularly with respect
to gender, race and class. She concludes that “It is likely that research could benefit
from going beyond a narrowly mechanistic focus on energy intake and physical
activity” and that “(t)he work of economic and social historians, sociologists, and
anthropologists may lead to a better understanding of the social forces at work”
(p. S512). In effect, Flegal is challenging the standard line of argument, repeated
in other contributions to the issue (Bouchard and Blair, 1999; Hill and Melanson,
1999), that since changes in body weight are determined by differences between
energy intake and expenditure, people need only manage these two variables in
order to manage their weight. Flegal’s point, and one that we would support, is that
body weight is a complex social issue, and that simply telling people to exercise
and eat more carefully is likely to have little impact.
Flegal’s representation of the state of knowledge about obesity, exercise and
health as partial and contradictory is an exception. Other contributors to the issue
are inclined to write in far more straightforward terms. For Bouchard and Blair
(1999) the problem is one of changing the ‘effortless’ (p. S500) lifestyles of
western populations. But for whom is life ‘effortless’? From whence comes their
certainty on this issue? Having admitted in the same article “the body of knowledge
on physical activity and relevant obesity outcomes is extremely limited” (p. S498),
they go on to claim that:
The reduction in energy expenditure associated with physical activity brought
about by automation and changing job and professional environmental circum-
stances has been nothing but dramatic in the second half of this century
(p. S499).
This slippage from uncertainty and the lack of valid and reliable data to certainty
that there is a problem and that people should change their ways is evident in other
contributions. In their review of research into the determinants of overweight and
obesity, Hill and Melanson (1999) conclude that:
Although it is intuitively obvious that improvements in technology over the
past few decades have substantially reduced the energy expenditure required
for daily living, this has not been definitively documented. All indications are
that work-related physical activity has declined. (p. S517)
Hill and Melanson do not elaborate on what these ‘indications’ might be. They
are equally speculative when it comes to physical activity and children:
542 MICHAEL GARD AND JAN WRIGHT

This (decrease in physical activity) is not limited to adults, as it is also likely

that significant declines have occurred in the amount of physical activity that
children receive in schools. It is not possible to quantify the extent of this
decline over the past two to three decades, but the requirement for physical
education has declined in most schools as has the number of school children
participating in physical education classes. (p. S517)
A straightforward criticism of these comments is that the authors seem to have
assumed that children expend significant amounts of energy in physical education
classes. This assumption is at odds with the existing research (Simons-Morton et
al., 1993). However, for the purposes of this paper, we are interested in the jump
from uncertainty, based on a self-confessed lack of evidence, to certainty. There is
perhaps a clue in Hill and Melanson’s comment that:
The amount of energy expenditure required for daily living also appears to be
declining due to an increase in attractive sedentary activities such as television
watching, video games, and computer interactions. Again, we do not have good
measures of sedentary activity that would allow us to examine changes over
time. (p. S517)
This comment suggests some interesting value judgements. Why might
sedentary activities be more ‘attractive’ to children than other activities? Two
possible explanations for this line of argument present themselves. The first is that
authors believe that non-sedentary activities are not pleasurable. The amount of
pleasure children derive from physical activity is a complex question, but it is clear
that a great deal of organised, adult-led forms of physical activity (for example,
physical education and competitive sports) are not pleasurable experiences for
many children (Portman, 1995). This would appear to be particularly true when
the explicit focus of the activity is cardio-vascular fitness and/or weight reduction
(Hopple and Graham, 1995). The second possible explanation appears to revolve
around a moral suspicion of children and the evils of technology. We would want
to ask why the authors believe children of today (as opposed to those of previous
generations) find sedentary activities so attractive? A similar moral position seems
to run through Bouchard and Blair’s (1999) explanations:
The tools available to reverse this unhealthy trend are remarkably simple in
appearance as they center on the promotion of eating regular and healthy
meals, avoiding high caloric density snacks, drinking water instead of energy-
containing beverages, keeping dietary fat at about 30% of calories, cutting
down on TV viewing time, walking more, participating more in sports and other
energy-consuming leisure activities, and other similar measures. However, it
will be a daunting task to change the course of nations that have progress-
ively become quite comfortable with an effortless lifestyle in which individual
consumption is almost unlimited. (p. S500)
Despite the intratextual moves to certainty in the form of moral imperatives to
exercise, to reduce time spent watching television and to eat less, at this level of
MANAGING UNCERTAINTY 543

knowledge production there are some spaces for contestation. There is a lack of
consensus amongst the experts, the language reporting findings (rather than that
making recommendations or suggesting solutions) is tentative and the grounds on
which conclusions are reached has to be available for scrutiny by other researchers.
While the peer review that occurs is generally based on a narrow set of positivist
criteria, it does mean that the methodology is generally described in some detail.
In the process of recontextualisation to the educational field of physical education,
the means by which the knowledge about obesity is produced becomes hidden and
the opportunity for scrutiny radically diminished.

Physical Education Professional and Academic Literature

Physical education academics writing in research and professional journals become
the recontextualising agents in transforming the knowledge produced by biomed-
ical experts into a set of assumptions which are used in turn to justify physical
education practice. The way this happens becomes obvious through an examination
of the introductory paragraphs of articles on physical activity and physical educa-
tion from a range of professional and academic journals. Despite the considerable
and increasing debate about the relationships between weight, health, and physical
activity, statements are made, with and sometimes without acknowledgment, that
uncritically infer the certainty of a detrimental relationship.
The effects of such practices are not only to premise all that follows on some-
what shaky assumptions but also to reproduce a new expert discourse to be drawn
on by other academics, teachers and preservice student teachers. The reiteration of
the relationship as ‘fact’ reduces the opportunity for contestation. Moreover, the
recontextualisation of obesity discourses in a context where ‘healthism’ is taken
for granted, translates what has been research designed to understand population
trends, into an individualist discourse which places the responsibility for health
firmly with the individual. Physical education practice thus focuses on individual
attitudes and behaviours on the assumption that each individual is at risk of
overweight/obesity.
The following examples from the US and the UK are typical articles within
the field of physical education which in one way or another argue that there is a
problem with current levels of participation in physical activity in and/or out of
school contexts and that physical education has a responsibility to increase partici-
pation. It follows that they also subscribe implicitly or explicitly to a form of health
based physical education.
Fox (1994), writing as an advocate of ‘health-related physical activity,’ in his
article, ‘Understanding young people and their decisions about physical activity,’
states that:
Inactivity is now firmly established at the policy-making level as a behaviour
that has primary consequences for health. Following the publication of the
Allied Dunbar National Fitness Survey (Activity and Health Research, 1992)
544 MICHAEL GARD AND JAN WRIGHT

we now have a Health of the Nation Physical Activity Task Force. Similarly,
following a recent rapid increase in the incidence of obesity, nutritionists and
physical activity experts have been brought together to seek solutions for the
prevention of obesity. (p. 15)
Several linguistic devices are employed here to recontextualise contested
knowledge as ‘fact.’ For example, the use of the present tense ‘is’ in the first
sentence of the quote, together with the words ‘firmly established’ leaves few
spaces for contestation – grammatically the statement is constructed as ‘truth’
(Halliday, 1985). In the last sentence, the phrases “recent rapid increase in obesity”
and “the prevention of obesity” both make invisible the conflicting and complex
research that would challenge the assumptions about obesity on which these
phrases rely. Activity (inactivity)-obesity-illhealth is linked in an implicit causal
relationship which, as is argued above, is not supported by research. In addition,
there is some ambiguity over the use of the term ‘obesity’ – does this conflate with
overweight here? Obesity only effects a very small percentage of the population,
yet here the moral imperative to be active is directed at all young people.
Savage and Scott (1998) provide another example of the obesity/physical
activity discourse. Again the detrimental relationship between obesity and
inactivity is (re)produced as uncontestable knowledge. In addition the authors state
again without reservations that “activity and fitness levels of American children
and youth have deteriorated significantly over the last 10–20 years” (p. 245). As
we have suggested this claim has not been substantiated by research (Goran et al.,
1998; Ruxton et al., 1999) and remains in the realms of conjecture. They go on:
A review of relevant literature concerning the health behaviours of children
indicate that children tend to be physically inactive (Sallis, 1993) and are not
developing activity levels that will endure into adulthood. Physical inactivity
is a well-documented risk factor for obesity and other chronic diseases such as
cardiovascular disease. Further, activity and fitness levels of American children
and youth have deteriorated significantly over the last 10–20 years. This trend
may be related to the amount of physical activity available to this population in
school physical education classes. (p. 245)
Consistent with the assumptions with which they begin, this article also assumes
a particular kind of physical education as the solution – that is, one where the main
purpose of physical education is to contribute to the health/fitness of students.
As has been pointed out above, it also makes the dubious assumption that the
amount of physical activity in what is generally no more than two, forty or sixty
minute lessons physical education a week in secondary schools is likely to make a
difference to students’ fitness/health.
In the report of another study, which on one level engages socially critical
discourses of race, Johnson (2000) also makes an uncritical connection between
disease factors, obesity and physical activity. Exploring strategies to promote
physical activity among Asian communities, Johnson argues for the need for
MANAGING UNCERTAINTY 545

such strategies on the basis of inequities in health outcomes such as “circulatory

disorders, . . . diabetes and associated renal failure” (p. 51). The link between
physical activity and these health outcomes is made through body weight: “(l)ong-
standing research has repeatedly found an association with body weight and mass
and these conditions, and that raised levels of physical activity can provide a degree
of protection from them” (p. 51).
A quick scan of any of the major English language professional and academic
physical education journals will soon demonstrate that these examples are not
isolated cases. If it were only a matter of a shaky set of assumptions then phys-
ical education would not be alone in basing its practices more on “hope than
happening” (Kenway, 1997). However, as we will argue below there are serious
and detrimental consequences contingent on assuming the obesity discourses as
‘truth’ and as legitimate foundations for physical education practice.

An Ethical Position: Why Does It Matter?

First it is necessary to say that we do not want to deny a relationship between
health and physical activity in the context of physical education. Neither are we
denying that physical activity should be an integral part of physical education.
What we are challenging is the narrow definition of health that has been adopted,
that is, the uncritical acceptance of particular narrow health imperatives, notably
the ‘obesity epidemic’ and the effects this has on the research conducted in the
name of physical education, on what counts as appropriate physical activity and on
physical education practice in schools.
A critique of this issue is not new. Kirk and Tinning (1991) and Colquhuon
(1990) have drawn attention to the implications of ‘healthism’ as the dominant
principle underpinning physical education. Tinning (1985) has also drawn atten-
tion to physical education’s implication (together with the fashion and fitness
industries) in the ‘cult of slenderness’ and the negative consequences of this for
young women. With the notion of an ‘obesity epidemic’ gaining prominence in
both academic and popular texts, those espousing health related physical education
however have a powerful and seductive rationale for their case. What has not been
adequately considered are the merits of the assumptions on which this case rests
nor the consequences for school students and the general population of an uncritical
acceptance of its premises.
We have argued above that within a ‘risk society,’ ‘experts’ have an important
role in managing uncertainty through their claim to knowledge. Within the context
of health, experts purport to manage the uncertainty of illness and death through the
identification of risk factors – that is, factors that are deemed to be largely avoidable
through the actions of individuals. The question, then, is why does it matter?
On one level, it matters simply because the successful hegemony of the obesity
discourse closes off spaces for other ways of thinking and doing physical education.
Other approaches to physical education are available which foreground educational
546 MICHAEL GARD AND JAN WRIGHT

objectives such as critical thinking (Daniel and Bergman-Drewe, 1998), social

responsibility (Hellison, 1995) and gender equity (Wright, 1998). But these clearly
carry less weight in a context in which healthism, underscored by the moral panic
about obesity, holds sway.
On another level, the hegemony of the obesity discourses matters because the
knowledges and practices associated with these discourses exert technologies of
power which serve to classify individuals (and populations) as normal or abnormal,
as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ citizens, as at risk and therefore requiring the intervention of
the state, in the form of the medico-health system and education. The obesity
discourses set up particular modes of regulation. In physical education they allow
the measurement and comparison of children and young people with culturally
constructed norms which have questionable validity, particularly in relation to
determining the present or future health of individuals (Burns, 1993).
These are discourses that allow us to construct those who are overweight as lazy
and morally wanting. They give permission on a daily basis for ridicule and harass-
ment and the right to publicly monitor the body shape of others. They stimulate a
constant self-surveillance, which if we accept the evidence of surveys suggest that
many people do not find themselves as measuring up. They contribute to a process
of normalisation that contributes to illnesses such as anorexia and bulimia. They
help to produce a lifestyle which Atrens (2000) describes as “riddled with needless
anxiety and conspicuously short of fun” (p. 2).
By accepting the obesity discourses uncritically physical educators are impli-
cated in these processes. It is apparent that body weighing, fitness testing and
lifestyle counselling remain standard features of the practise of physical education,
despite the highly questionable efficacy and value of these practices. Rather than
offering children strategies with which they might critically examine and ques-
tion body weight norms and the associated moral imperatives to exercise, these
approaches to physical education become part of the machinery of surveillance.
We would also argue that the construction of certainty around weight, exercise
and health conceals a desire to be certain about the human body; to see it as quanti-
fiable and controllable. However, if the research in this area indicates anything, it
is that different bodies respond to exercise and food intake in radically different
ways. It may well be that the body is not an object that lends itself at all well to
rational quantification. This would certainly seem to be one plausible explanation
for the difficulties researchers continue to have in attempting to establish stable
‘truths’ about weight, exercise and health. It may even tell us something about
the motivation for something called a ‘consensus conference’, such as the one
mentioned earlier in this paper. As Beck’s analysis of ‘experts’ in ‘risk societies’
suggests, it is precisely because stable knowledge in this area has proved so elusive,
and will probably remain so, that attempts to find ‘consensus’ amongst researchers
and commentators assume greater and greater importance. The unquantifiable body
is as scandal, and no doubt, in the future, we will see more concerted efforts to keep
the scandal a secret.
MANAGING UNCERTAINTY 547

With respect to the issues outlined in this paper, we would argue that students of
physical education in schools and universities should be allowed and encouraged to
conceive of scientific knowledge about the body as contested and unstable. While
it is probable that some level of physical activity has some health benefits for some
people, there is little else that we can say with any certainty in this area. Therefore,
we see a need for physical and health educators to radically expand their definition
of what has come to be known as ‘informed health decision making.’ It has been
well documented that anxiety about body weight and fitness has tended to result in
‘choosing’ to embark on diets or exercise programs. Both of these courses of action
have been shown to be of limited value as long term weight control strategies,
particularly dieting which appears to result in very little weight reduction (Miller,
1999).
Instead, we would like to see people choose to participate in physical activity
because they find it pleasurable and to ‘know’ that their moral and physical integ-
rity does not depend on it. This would require a very different kind of advocacy
from the one that currently dominates health and exercise discourse. For physical
education, it suggests a more critical engagement with medico-scientific knowl-
edge and a more relaxed and playful approach to physical activity itself. Most of
all, we need to be able to see scientific uncertainty about the body, not as a curse,
but as confirmation that we are not machines. In the end, Bouchard and Blair’s
(1999) comment (quoted above) that the ‘tools’ needed to regulate body weight
are ‘remarkably simple in appearance’ is both untrue and counter-productive. It is
untrue because if obesity is the worldwide problem that the experts claim it is (and
as we have tried to show, the evidence for this claim is, at best, inconclusive), then
it is not simply a matter of energy in/energy out. Clearly, questions of race, gender
and class are central to the phenomena, such as it is. And it is counter-productive
because it exhorts people to establish relationships with their body based on fear,
anxiety and guilt. What does it say about me if weight control is ‘simple’ and yet I
continue to put on weight, no matter how hard I try?
We suspect that it may be better for physical educators to say nothing about
obesity, exercise and health, rather than singing the praises of slimness and
vigorous exercise and condemning the evils of fat and ‘sedentary’ life. Failing this,
we implore physical educators to look underneath the surface of the discipline’s
cherished beliefs. While the terror of finding nothing is ever present, we believe
that a renewed focus on less instrumental and more child centred approaches to
physical activity, and the sheer pleasure of using one’s body, may indeed be a
liberating experience for all.

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