「ファット」であることを学ぶ

――アメリカ合衆国のファット・アクセプタンス運動における情動的関係から生まれる共同性――

抄録

  This article focuses on a generation of community based on affective relationship in fat acceptance movement in the United States through an examination of how people in the fat acceptance movement learn to be “fat” while meanings of “fat” are negotiated and recreated among the members.

  “Fat acceptance” is a social movement that strives to change institutional and social attitudes toward body size and appearance, demanding that size and weight diversity is a necessary civil right. The fat acceptance movement was born in 1969 alongside the civil rights and women’s rights movements in the United States. However, fat discrimination has never been recognized as a pressing issue to be solved. This is because “fat,” as a civil rights category, has not been regarded as an “essential” category, in contrast to race or sex, which are protected in anti-discrimination law. Also, because of fat activists’ lack of self-affirmation, the movement has had difficulties in developing. In these situations, however, even today after 40 years of its establishment, people in the movement gather and the movement still continues.

  Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to discuss thaw what type of community are being formed in the place for people in the movement to gather, meet and talk each other. Especially, the article focuses on affective relationship between members that arise from sites of interaction. My field is the annual convention of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA), which leads the fat acceptance movement in the United States.

  As a conclusion of this study, it is explained that the community is full of laughter, humor, joy and care of the others, which is generated from affective relationships. “Fat” is one form of knowledge that the participants learn and one form of language and body manner which participants learn through communication. They struggle to discover, learn, and create a shared meaning and concept of value associated with fat, while remaining caught up in the existing sense of value. As a community, it is thus uneasy in its relations to its primary subject of fat, but it is from that relationship that the creativity of the movement is engendered. These affective relationships encourage the members to gather and the movement will go on.