October 5, 2017

For this seminar I will present Chapter Two from my book manuscript, Faith and the Pursuit of Health. Biospirituality and Discerning Risk situates the reader within some of the daily contradictions that arise around eating and feeding others when staples foods have changed, influencing the meanings of fat and fitness. I propose thinking about this process as biospirituality, a framework for exploring the ways that Christianity provides pathways to create well-being, and sometimes health, by making health actions a form of religious practice. In this chapter, I also explore the globalization of cardiometabolic disorders, outlining macro political and economic changes and global trends in order to unpack how these broader dynamics are articulated in Samoa.