{"title":"Eat Your Way to Health: A History of Ability in the Progressive Era","authors":"Nina Mackert","doi":"10.1017/S0021875822000329","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The article introduces the approach of a critical ability history by analyzing Progressive Era diet advice. It shows how calorie counting reframed health as an ability resulting from individuals’ responsible self-conduct. At that time, novel understandings of bodies and health, techniques of measuring them, and hopes of improving them in the name of eugenics and industrial capitalism suggested that bodies and health were malleable and that it was the duty of individual citizens to care for and shape them. As such, health as ability became a terrain of exclusion as well as of struggles for citizenship recognition.","PeriodicalId":14966,"journal":{"name":"Journal of American Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of American Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875822000329","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The article introduces the approach of a critical ability history by analyzing Progressive Era diet advice. It shows how calorie counting reframed health as an ability resulting from individuals’ responsible self-conduct. At that time, novel understandings of bodies and health, techniques of measuring them, and hopes of improving them in the name of eugenics and industrial capitalism suggested that bodies and health were malleable and that it was the duty of individual citizens to care for and shape them. As such, health as ability became a terrain of exclusion as well as of struggles for citizenship recognition.
期刊介绍:
Journal of American Studies seeks to critique and interrogate the notion of "America", pursuing this through international perspectives on the history, literature, politics and culture of the United States. The Journal publishes original peer-reviewed research and analysis by established and emerging scholars throughout the world, considering US history, politics, literature, institutions, economics, film, popular culture, geography, sociology and related subjects in domestic, continental, hemispheric, and global contexts. Its expanded book review section offers in-depth analysis of recent American Studies scholarship to promote further discussion and debate.