Commentary: Biopolitical injustice and contemporary capitalism

Abstract

How is big industry linked to rising obesity in the United States? This issue is tangentially explored in the article that I consider. My commentary expands on this point to apprehend the role of corporations and industries in producing and profiting from population health problems. Taking the cases of obesity and cigarette smoking together, I examine how corporations claim social‐responsibility values as a strategic means of forestalling criticism and protecting their markets while shifting accountability for the risks and harms that are related to consumption onto consumers themselves. These dynamics reveal the centrality of biopolitical injustice to the workings of contemporary capitalism.

Everyday translation: health practitioners’ perspectives on obesity and metabolic disorders in Samoa

“…Public health focused on obesity and metabolic disorders is increasingly concerned with ways to address food environments and broader structural inequalities (Benson, 2012;Stuckler & Nestle, 2012;Swinburn et al, 2011). Health practitioners do not foreground global trends, including increasing transnationalism, dependence on the cash economy, a move away from customary agriculture, and the incorporation of foreign imported foods as prestige foods.…”

The social life of health behaviors: The political economy and cultural context of health practices

“…With the individual the center of health consideration, attention to health behavior distracts attention from the broader concerns of health disparities, devaluing the health and life circumstances of the patient (Chavez et al ). It also distracts attention from the political‐economic aspects of health disparities and issues of social responsibility and the resulting biopolitical injustice of corporations and industries “that produce and profit from these epidemiological facts” (Benson , 489; see also Greenhalgh ; Singer and Baer ).…”

“Hymns of a More or Less Idiotic Character”: The Impact and Use of “Sankey's” Gospel Songs in Late Nineteenth‐Century Australia

“…13 And even though American author Louis Benson considered that the songs were "crude in sentiment and unrefined in expression," 14 he recognised the appeal to the senses that came from the fact that the tunes were "'easy', and 'catchy' and sentimental, swaying with soft or martial rhythm and culminating in the taking 'refrain'; calling for no musical knowledge to understand and no skill to render them; inevitably popular with the unfailing appeal of clear melody." 15 Criticism was based on value judgments that saw "good" music as harmonically complex and "good" hymns as having theological depth. Kent suggests that "one of the reasons why music worked so powerfully for Moody, forming a vital component of the new revivalist techniques, was that audiences were able to accept uncritically in a sentimental musical form what they would have hesitated to accept in the clearer form of the sermon."…”