Abject Relations : : Everyday Worlds of Anorexia / / Megan Warin.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Rutgers University Press Backlist eBook-Package 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Warin, Megan,
• Place / Publishing House: New Brunswick, NJ : : Rutgers University Press, , [2009]; ©2009
• Year of Publication: 2009
• Language: English
• Series: Studies in Medical Anthropology
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (248 p.)

Abject Relations presents an alternative approach to anorexia, long considered the epitome of a Western obsession with individualism, beauty, self-control, and autonomy. Through detailed ethnographic investigations, Megan Warin looks at the heart of what it means to live with anorexia on a daily basis. Participants describe difficulties with social relatedness, not being at home in their body, and feeling disgusting and worthless. For them, anorexia becomes a seductive and empowering practice that cleanses bodies of shame and guilt, becomes a friend and support, and allows them to forge new social relations. Unraveling anorexia's complex relationships and contradictions, Warin provides a new theoretical perspective rooted in a socio-cultural context of bodies and gender. Abject Relations departs from conventional psychotherapy approaches and offers a different "logic," one that involves the shifting forces of power, disgust, and desire and provides new ways of thinking that may have implications for future treatment regimes.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Steering a Course between Fields -- 3. Knowing through the Body -- 4. The Complexities of Being Anorexic -- 5. Abject Relations with Food -- 6. "Me and My Disgusting Body" -- 7. Be-coming Clean -- 8. Reimagining Anorexia -- Notes -- References -- Index -- About the Author