Paradoxical bodies: negotiating biomedical fix, responsibility, and care in a weight-loss surgery clinic

Abstract

This ethnographic project explores how inherent discursive and social tensions are expressed and worked out within obesity care at a weight-loss surgical (WLS) clinic. First, complicated doctor and patient encounters occur because WLS follows a medical logic of intervention and is presented as a “biomagical” procedure that miraculously alters the body. Surgeons, however, explain that the surgery’s success depends on patients’ long and hard work. Second, the clinic’s interdisciplinary approach adds more complexity. While expanding the scope of treatment, it blurs the division of labor among professionals and the distinction between body and mind. It also diffuses the responsibility for patients’ lifestyles and recovery among professionals. Third, alongside notions about patients’ autonomy and free choice, their wishes and bodies are constantly channeled, problematized, and negotiated with various family and peer support. While crucial for the surgery’s success, such interconnectedness raises questions about how decision making and social pressures affect the patients’ journey. Thus, WLS is refracted among webs of multiple actors and contradictory perspectives. This complexity invites a reflection on how such tensions and paradoxes destabilize medical power in modifying the body, challenge personal responsibility assumptions, and impact the quality of care.