To the West and East of Interstate-35: Obesity,Philanthropic Entrepreneurialism,and the Delineation of Risk in Austin,Texas

The author draws on a case study of Austin, Texas to argue that the emerging cannon of critical obesity studies should be situated in and interrogated with reference to empirical research undertaken in the urban spaces that enable or constrain healthy behavior. With federal, state and city-scale government departments calling for concerted obesity-prevention efforts, it is suggested that this enterprise has now rendered Austin a space of philanthropic entrepreneurialism. Drawing on stakeholder interviews with those charged with healthy-lifestyle promotion, the author contends that the city's bifurcation by Interstate-35 marks a clear real and imagined socioeconomic and racial divide. Moreover, this divide permits the delineation of East Austin as ‘at risk’ by virtue of its Hispanic population and the assumption that higher prevalent rates of obesity among Hispanic residents are an outcome of certain cultural norms. As a result, East Austin has been legitimized as a strategic place of intervention to help boost the city's image as a healthy, and therefore good, place to live. However, such interventions favor changing personal behavior and therefore neglect to address the environmental and structural factors which, it is asserted, often have far more immediate and profound effects on health.