Obesity as Moral Panic: A Thematic Analysis of Empirical and Theoretical Publications in a Temporal Perspective

Abstract

Obesity is considered one of the thorniest contemporary global social issues. However, not all social scientists perceive medically overweight people as threatening the individual and public health. In this paper, I analyze one of such theoretical frames on obesity and review studies of obesity as moral panic based on the academic publications included in Scopus citations database. As a result, I offer periodization of the empirical and theoretical papers, where the authors use this theoretical approach and allocate stable and volatile traits of the moral panic research on obesity in the temporal perspective. I conclude that despite the evolution of this theoretical and methodological tradition in the last century, its cultural universality and measuring the dynamics of obesity moralisation remain questionable.