Weighty issues : fatness and thinness as social problems

Many people consider their weight to be a personal problem; when, then, does body weight become a social problem? Until recently, the major public concern was whether enough food was consistently available. As food systems began to provide ample and stable amounts of food, questions about food availability were replaced with concerns about "ideal" weights and appearance. These interests were aggregated into public concerns about defining people as "too fat" and "too thin."Social constructionist perspectives can contribute to the understanding of weight problems because they focus attention on how these problems are created, maintained, and promoted within various social environments. While there is much objectivist research concerning weight problems, few studies address the socially constructed aspects of fatness and thinness.This book however draws from and contributes to social constructionist perspectives. The chapters in this volume offer several perspectives that can be used to understand the way society deals with fatness and thinness. The contributors consider historical foundations, medical models, gendered dimensions, institutional components, and collective perspectives. These different perspectives illustrate the multifaceted nature of obesity and eating disorders, providing examples of how a variety of social groups construct weight as a social problem.

Choice 评论

Like its companion Interpreting Weight (CH, Feb'00), this edited volume employs a social constructionist perspective. However, the articles here are sociohistorical and political-economic analyses of the processes that have defined social problems related to body weight. Initial chapters present historical perspectives on French and American notions of appropriate child nutrition in the first half of the 20th century, a historical-biographical analysis of Hilda Bruch's foundational work on disordered eating, a description of 20th-century American biomedical traditions in approaches to overweight and obesity, and an account of the rise and fall of Dreyer's anthropometrics in Britain. Three chapters address issues of gender (gendered notions of "ideal" weight, a sociology of dieting in women, and a comparative analysis of the social-political aspects of female anorexia and male bodybuilding). Final chapters address the "low-fat" food industry within a consumerist context, professional dilemmas for dietitians, body weight issues related to the vegetarian movement, and size acceptance as a social movement. The emphasis on the role of institutions and the historical perspective here will be particularly appreciated by those who may find that a symbolic interactionist perspective provides an incomplete sociological understanding of weight-related themes. General readers; undergraduates through faculty. L. A. Crandall; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Preface	p. ix
Part I Introduction
1 Body Weight as a Social Problem	p. 1
Part II Historical Foundations
2 Children and Weight Control: Priorities in the United States and France	p. 9
3 Fat Boys and Goody Girls: Hilde Bruch's Work on Eating Disorders and the American Anxiety about Democracy, 1930-1960	p. 31
Part III Medical Models
4 Constitutional Types, Institutional Forms: Reconfiguring Diagnostic and Therapeutic Approaches to Obesity in Early Twentieth-Century Biomedical Investigation	p. 53
5 Defining Perfect and Not-So-Perfect Bodies: The Rise and Fall of the "Dreyer Method" for the Assessment of Physique and Fitness, 1918-26	p. 75
Part IV Gendered Dimensions
6 Ideal Weight/Ideal Women: Society Constructs the Female	p. 97
7 Dieting Women: Self-Surveillance and the Body Panopticon	p. 117
8 Fleshing Out the Discomforts of Femininity: The Parallel Cases of Female Anorexia and Male Compulsive Bodybuilding	p. 133
Part V Institutional Components
9 Commodity Knowledge in Consumer Culture: The Role of Nutritional Health Promotion in the Making of the Diet Industry	p. 159
10 Meanings of Weight among Dietitians and Nutritionists	p. 183
Part VI Collective Processes
11 Too Skinny or Vibrant and Healthy?: Weight Management in the Vegetarian Movement	p. 209
12 The Size Acceptance Movement and the Social Construction of Body Weight	p. 231
Biographical Sketches of the Contributors	p. 251
Index	p. 255

可借阅:*

链接这些题名

已订购

摘要

摘要

评论 (1)

Choice 评论

目录