‘Complexity’ as a rhetorical smokescreen for UK public health inaction on diet
Author
Savona, Natalie
Thompson, Claire
Smith, Dianna
Cummins, Steven
Attention
2299/22802
Abstract
‘Complexity’ is theorised as a characteristic of modern food systems that poses a challenge to improving population diets. This paper seeks to explore the discursive deployment of ‘complexity’ in the context of public health. Doing so helps inform a more critical assessment of commercial and political determinants of health, and of ‘complexity’ as a prevailing frame for public health issues. Qualitative methods were used to explore ‘responsibility’ for healthy eating in the food system in the United Kingdom. Discourse analysis was conducted on corporate and government documents, and interviews with industry and government stakeholders. The aim was to examine the implications of ‘complexity’ within discourses of dietary public health. ‘Complexity’ was used not only to characterise dietary public health problems but also as a rhetorical device in public health narratives. It performed two main discursive functions: firstly, to represent diet-health problems as so multi-layered and difficult that they are intractable. Secondly, and despite this acknowledged complexity, to deflect from food system actions for improving diet to ‘simpler’ and non-food interventions, by industry and government. These uses of ‘complexity’ serve to attribute primary responsibility to individuals for dietary choice and to obscure inaction by government and industry, who have most control over the determinants of those choices. In short, ‘complexity’ can be used discursively to generate a smokescreen masking policy inaction in addressing public health problems.
Publication date
2020-04-30Published in
Critical Public HealthPublished version
https://doi.org/10.1080/09581596.2020.1755421Other links
http://hdl.handle.net/2299/22802Metadata
Show full item recordRelated items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Workplace bullying from the perspectives of trainee Clinical Psychologists
Brown, Lan Rachel; Mason, Barbara; Carter, Madeline (2021-01-22)Purpose: Research has identified that workplace bullying is a significant problem within health care, with health-care trainees at particular risk. The purpose of this study is to explore the experiences of workplace ... -
Mapping staff perspectives towards the delivery of hospital care for children and young people with and without learning disabilities in England : A mixed methods national study
Oulton, Kate; Gibson, Faith; Carr, Lucinda; Hassiotis, Angela; Jewitt, Carey; Kenten, Charlotte; Russell, Jessica; Whiting, Mark; Tuffrey-Wijne, Irene; Wray, Jo (2018-03-23)Background: Children and young people (CYP) with learning disabilities (LD) are a vulnerable population with increased risk of abuse and accidental injury and whose parents have reported concerns about the quality, safety ... -
The Health and Wellbeing of Female Street Sex Workers
Elliott, Nalishebo (2017-11-10)Previous research on female street sex workers (FSSWs) has primarily concentrated on the stigmatisation of women’s involvement in the sex industry particularly with reference to the spread of HIV/AIDS. The response of the ...