Challenging Diet Culture: The Strategies of Social Movements

In this chapter, I return to Bourdieu’s theory of practice as a way to understand social change, by focusing on ruptures in the field, the development of a radical habitus, and the role of capital in facilitating social change. I reflect on the previous literature on anti-diet social movements in this chapter, examining how diet culture has been challenged in a fragmented way by looking at individual communities and causes. In doing so, I argue that the broad ‘anti-diet movement’ can best be described through the lens of what social movement studies scholar Francesca Polletta refers to as an ‘awkward’ social movement; one that is fragmented and conceptually difficult to grasp. I end this chapter by posing the questions: How are women united in the anti-diet strategies they employ? And how can these anti-diet practices fuel social change?