ABSTRACT
The purpose of this brief chapter is to say exactly what ‘critical’ means to me as a scholar. Through this chapter, and with theoretical and methodological issues in mind, I want to describe a path through critical obesity research that I tried to follow, explicitly emphasising the word ‘I’. A reader might not agree with some or all of the material that I have covered here, but they should at least understand my approach to the writing and editing of this volume. I am drawn to Fuller’s image of the ‘unmasker’; the scholar who is struggling against an academic foe but, closer to the main point, also against her/himself. Fuller’s argument can be seen as the ‘motives’ of one’s thinking, a fairly simple idea but worth repeating it; whether the material is fat, obesity or anything else, we have to find ways to understand ourselves. For me, one strategy – and it is one suggestion amongst many others – is to be to read against one’s thinking, even engage with unfashionable positions.
