Enacting the overweight body in residential child care: Eating and agency beyond the nature–culture divide

This article reconstructs multiple enactments of overweight bodies in residential child care by analysing ethnographic field notes. The account links in with current tendencies in childhood studies to reach a more material and relational understanding of children’s agency. Examining concepts of embodiment as discussed in science and technology studies and phenomenology, the article offers an approach to childhood studies which connects the corporeal and agency. It shows how different enactments of children’s bodies and food produce different forms of agency.