ABSTRACT
This chapter considers ways of thinking about sociocultural contexts that can be broadly positioned within the big picture of obesogenic environments. It illustrates that varying discursive exposures are experienced in different social-cultural settings. Automobility is regarded as linked to obesity because it has displaced walking as a dominant form of mobility with sitting, riding and driving. The New Urbanism and Smart Growth movements have introduced a countervailing discourse to dominant planning ideologies with the promotion of walking places and liveable communities. Qualitative research focusing on narrative provides some endorsement that broader discourses are at work in influencing Pacific people's expenditure patterns. Language can be understood as the common structures of verbal and written communication. In the language of contemporary human geography, however, the term has encompassed the varied elements that comprise a context for everyday life.
