Synopses & Reviews
This book showcases a selection of current work and debates on weight and body management practices that are being produced from the vibrant arena of critical and postmodern approaches in the social sciences. Weight issues have become central to Western understandings of health and identity, but analyses of weight and body management have often failed to contextualise weight related issues. This timely book addresses this gap by examining three key areas, namely, representation, identities, and practice, to explore and interrogate how body and weight management, subjectivities, experiences, and practices are constituted within and by the normative discourses of contemporary western culture.
Synopsis
This book addresses weight and body management practices by exploring how experiences and practices are constituted by contemporary western culture.
Table of Contents
Introducing Critical Bodies: Representations, Practices and Identities of Weight and Body Management--
S.Riley &
M.Burns * Introducing Section 1: Representations and Constructions of Body Weight and Body Management--
S.Wiggins * Deconstructing Un/healthy Body Weight and Weight Management--
H.Malson * "It's all About Women Being Weak": Anorexic Women Reading Representations of Eating Disorders--
P.Saukko * Obesity Discourse, Education and Identity--
E.Rich, J.Evans &
R.Allwood * Introduction to 2: Constructing Embodied Identities--
H.Frith * Feminism & Fatness: An Uncomfortable Issue--
C.Heenan * Starving in Cyberspace: The Construction of Identity on 'Pro-eating-disorder' Websites--
K.Day &
T.Keys * "I've Made this Deal with my Body": Young Men's Constructions of Embodied Identity--
R.Gill * Introduction to Section 3: Body Management Practices and Implications--
P.Markula * Dis/Orders of Weight Control: Bulimia and Discourses of Healthy Weight--
M.Burns &
N.Gavey * Body Management Practices and Implications--
L.Aphramor * The Meanings and Experiences of Commercial Dieting Across the Female Life Course--
D.Gimlin