Julie Guthman's examination of obesity crisis wins book award

Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism, a new book by Julie Guthman, associate professor of Community Studies at UC Santa Cruz, was named winner of the 2012 James M. Blaut Innovative Publication Award from the Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers.

In Weighing In, Guthman investigates the causes behind the so-called "obesity crisis" by drawing on political-economic and cultural analysis to find out what's making people fatter and whether it matters.

Guthman received the award at the recent AAG annual meeting in New York. The award is named for James Morris Blaut, who was a professor of anthropology and geography at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The Cultural and Political Ecology Study Group bestows the annual award in recognition of innovative scholarship in cultural and political ecology.