University of Cambridge
Folding fat: skinfold calipers, substance, and the circulation of doubt
Abstract
dc:description.abstractThis thesis is a sociological study of the measurement of fat with Harpenden skinfold calipers. In the United Kingdom and elsewhere, fat is often understood as an obvious problem. Rather than approaching fat as already-known, I focus on historic and contemporary scientific research on skinfold measurement to consider an alternative story about fat. Invented in the UK in the 1950s, the Harpenden calipers quickly became an established tool for use in scientific research as they were a cheap, portable, mechanical tool capable of measuring subcutaneous fat in the body with significantly less error than earlier models. However, their status today is ambiguous: calipers remain in use, but researchers describe the tool as a problem. From this knotty juncture, I focus on how calipers materialize fat. My study is based on interviews with epidemiologists, sports scientists, and statisticians who use calipers as part of their research, as well as close analysis of published contemporary and historic academic research and a variety of other materials, including training videos, research protocols, podcasts, newsletters, news articles, promotional materials and more. I argue that skinfold calipers paradoxically materialize fat as a doubtful substance, one with a hard-to-measure, distributed shape and relatedly unstable meaning. Doubt proliferates due to the uneasy meeting of scientific norms with the tool itself. Through Celia Lury’s concept of a problem space, I centre the materiality of skinfold calipers to follow how problems are composed and transformed over space and time. Specifically, I unravel doubt across three empirical chapters, focusing on tool, technique, and meaning. I begin by recounting the calipers’ invention through classic science and technology studies (STS) scholarship on the relations among tools, research objects, and scientific work. I show how researchers view the calipers as both right and wrong for the job of measuring fat. Next, I turn to technique. Skinfold measurement requires the measurer to grasp and fold the subject’s flesh. Reliance on haptic technique, I argue, troubles scientific norms, creating further doubt about the measure. Finally, I consider two theories through which researchers have sought to interpret the meaning of skinfold measurements: W. H. Sheldon’s somatotypes and James Neel’s thrifty genotype hypothesis. Doing so shows the continual difficulty of interpreting what skinfold data means. By analysing the type metaphor underpinning both concepts, I also show how both share a central idea: that fat is definitional of the body on the whole. In sum, by following skinfold calipers in the problem space, I show how fat becomes a doubtful substance. Important work in fat studies has shown its dense cultural meanings. I contribute, meanwhile, to a small but growing body of sociological scholarship on how fat is studied and made meaningful in scientific research. Specifically, studying fat alongside doubt opens the possibility of considering the substance otherwise. My thesis also contributes to enduring concerns in STS about measurement practices and the relationships among tools, techniques, and meanings. Analysing tools in relation to emotion adds a novel perspective to this scholarship.
Degree
thesis:*- Name dc:type.qualificationname
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Level dc:type.qualificationlevel
- Doctoral
- Grantor dc:publisher.institution
- University of Cambridge
- Year dc:date.issued
- 2024
Author and committee
dc:creator, dc:contributor.*- Author dc:creator
-
- O'Neill, Jarrah
- Advisors dc:contributor.advisor
-
- Franklin, Sarah
- Dow, Katharine
Subjects
dc:subject × 4Rights
dc:rightsIdentifiers
dc:identifier.*- DOI dc:identifier.doi
- https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.120343
- OAI identifier oai:identifier
- oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/387630