My weekend readings, they relate to current events. 10 November 2009 11:09 am
Posted by Tracy in : culture,geekery,health,health at every size,history,monkeys,news,politics,random,reading,school,society , View CommentsSo like I mentioned yesterday, I read a lot this weekend (more so than usual even), because I had a new deadline on top of the stuff assigned for class: two of my NYU library books were recalled. (A third book is also now due the 20th, so I’ve got just a little time to keep that one on the back burner for a bit. Anyway.) Book #1 was Weighty Issues: Fatness and Thinness as Social Problems, edited by Jeffery Sobal and Donna Maurer (1999). We read the introduction to an earlier Maurer and Sobal book, Eating Agendas: Food and Nutrition as Social Problems (1995) earlier this term at the start of Marion Nestle’s food sociology class, and it was so interesting I got the whole book out of the library, which in turn led me to some of Sobal and Maurer’s other books, namely Weighty Issues and Book #2: Interpreting Weight: The Social Management of Fatness and Thinness (also 1999). Anyway.
The centerpiece for today’s post is from Chapter 3 of Weighty Issues, “Fat Boys and Goody Girls: Hilde Bruch’s Work on Eating Disorders and the American Anxiety about Democracy, 1930-1960″ by Paula Saukko. I promise you, it’s awesome. Saukko takes a historical case study about some early research into eating disorders, and uses it to demonstrate how health theory and practice is a reflection of its social, cultural, political, and historical context. I was so not expecting this piece to be great, and then (more…)
