Social Class, Scarcity, and Nutrition Transitions: Pressures Shaping Eating Behaviors in Urban Mexico

• In Event: 545 - Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtable Session.
  In Refereed Roundtable: Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtables. Table 01. Consumer Studies Network

Abstract

In low-income countries, obesity traditionally has been a condition of affluence. In contrast, in advanced economies, overweight and obesity tend to be concentrated in low-income communities. Mexico is a developing country undergoing rapid nutritional transformation and now ranks among countries with the highest prevalence of obesity. As incidence of obesity has increased nationally in Mexico and become a widespread public health issue, it is becoming concentrated in the low-income population. Social class differences in trends in obesity and diet-related health conditions call for further examination of how class differences reflect unequal distribution of economic, social, and cultural resources that enable or constrain healthy dietary practices—yet very few such studies have been conducted in developing countries. This article applies a theoretical perspective that integrates Bourdieu’s scholarship on habitus and economic and social capital with emerging insights from behavioral economics about the grinding influence of scarcity in reducing effective capacity to practice healthy behaviors. Using this theoretical framework, the paper presents findings from an ethnographic study in urban Mexico that examined dietary patterns and factors influencing those patterns among different social class communities within a single city in order to examine how socioeconomic status shapes risk of obesogenic diets. The paper argues that habitus interacts with nearness to or distance from scarcity to shape dietary aspirations and capacity to practice healthy food consumption behaviors. These findings illuminate several ways that social class shapes dietary practices and body weight, insights that can contribute to more-effective interventions to improve nutritional health and reduce health inequalities.

Author

• Susan Bridle-Fitzpatrick, Tulane University