Soc Hist Med. 2016 Nov;29(4):757-780. doi: 10.1093/shm/hkw015. Epub 2016 May 07.

Weighting for Health: Management, Measurement and Self-surveillance in the Modern Household.

Social history of medicine : the journal of the Society for the Social History of Medicine

Roberta Bivins, Hilary Marland

PMID: 27956758 PMCID: PMC5146684 DOI: 10.1093/shm/hkw015

Abstract

Histories of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century medicine emphasise the rise of professional and scientific authority, and suggest a decline in domestic health initiatives. Exploring the example of weight management in Britain, we argue that domestic agency persisted and that new regimes of measurement and weighing were adapted to personal and familial preferences as they entered the household. Drawing on print sources and objects ranging from prescriptive literature to postcards and 'personal weighing machines', the article examines changing practices of self-management as cultural norms initially dictated by ideals of body shape and function gradually incorporated quantified targets. In the twentieth century, the domestic management of health-like the medical management of illness-was increasingly technologised and re-focused on quantitative indicators of 'normal' or 'pathological' embodiment. We ask: in relation to weight, how did quantification permeate the household, and what did this domestication of bodily surveillance mean to lay users?

Keywords: health; household; measurement; self-surveillance; weight

Publication Types

• Journal Article