EL DISCURSO MÉDICO COMO ESTIGMA Y REFUGIO: CONCEPCIONES DE LA OBESIDAD Y SUS CONSECUENCIAS SUBJETIVAS.

In Argentina, food and nutrition diseases are complex social problems that cover a wide range, from malnutrition deaths in a food producer country, to bulimia and anorexia in middle-class youth, among other issues like the increase in cases of diabetes and heart disease linked to the non-stopping growth of obesity. These problems mentioned are related to urgent situations, that even though rises from different social and economic contexts, the State should provide an answer. Obesity has become a central issue for the public agenda since excess weight has ceased to be the healthy signal of physical and economic well-being to become a disease, which must be fought by all means. Different programs have been carried out by the State to control and prevent it, with the collaboration of private sectors, including specialized medical centers. They propose different medical approaches, with their theoretical assumptions and therapeutic approaches, which are fundamental, because they are performative, both on disease control, as to the subjectivity, practices and lifestyles of the patient. In this paper we will analyze the discourse of the support groups for the therapies of obesity of patients in undergoing treatment. We will address the interactions in groups, managed by the participants themselves through the mobile networks, which set the determining weight of the medical assumptions about their identities, behaviors and attitudes. Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 1995, 2003, 2006), from a multimodal perspective (Kress, 2010) and qualitative (Guba and Lincoln, 1994) is the theoretical and methodological framework of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]