Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Considered in conjunction with psychological research highlighting the contribution of gender roles in the etiology of eating disorders, recent sociological findings pointing to the mobilization potential of self-help suggest that eating disorder support groups may be effective because they encourage feminist identity development. Participant observation in four different groups over the course of 10 months reveals that eating disorder support groups do possess feminist potential. Participants not only learn to trust in their experience but also to be more assertive in personal relationships and to affirm the value of emotion, particularly anger. However, participants do not identify as women but rather on the narrower basis of a shared disorder. As a result, the eating disorder, not gender, legitimates participants’ feminist achievements. Participants subsequently undergo an identity transformation in which eating disordered becomes participants’ primary identity. Continued identification as eating disordered is necessary for participants’ to enjoy its legitimating power. Two processes enable this transformation: frame extension and disease extension. Such findings carry both practical and theoretical implications. First, the study offers insight into how clinicians might improve support groups. Second, the study suggests a need to reframe the debate centered on self-help’s mobilization potential and to further investigate the role of self-labeling in mental illness. Continued exploration of self-labeling, as well as frame and disease extension, is necessary to fully appreciate the impact of employing illness narratives strategically as a means of achieving desired social ends.

Publication Type: Proceeding

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Abstract: Environmental justice approaches to the subject of food production have largely examined the presence of environmental toxins on agricultural land where low income people and people of color live, work and play. This paper contends that the production and consumption of food itself constitutes an important environmental justice issue. Within the United States communities of color are actively denied access to the means of food production through political and institutional practices of exclusion, racism and economic disadvantage. Additionally, elites enjoy disproportionate access to fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains and lean protein, contributing to disproportionate rates of diet related health problems in low income people and people of color. An analysis of the relationship between environmental injustice and access to healthy food is foreshadowed by current scholarship in environmental justice, sustainable agriculture and food security. I bring these literatures together to contextualize land loss by African-American farmers, lack of access to grocery stores in low-income African American communities, and disproportionate rates of diet related health problems. My ethnographic highlights the work of a collaborative of organizations working against these obstacles in an urban African-American community. I then explore theoretical benefits that flow from the confluence of environmental justice and food scholarship and conclude by suggesting other avenues for research.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In this study, the subjective experiences of eating problems were explored through qualitative in-depth interviews with eleven participants in the Miami, Florida metropolitan area. The purpose of the study is to offer a different perspective on eating problems, from the point of view of the sufferer. The main goal is to move beyond traditional medical and psychological definitions and explanations about the development, perpetuation and disease of eating disorders to a more comprehensive examination of how sufferers of eating problems view their everyday lives. The study was designed with three main underlying research questions: (1) What are the subjective experiences of people living with problems related to eating? (2) What is the role of food in the everyday lives of those with eating problems? (3) How do the sufferers define their eating problem? Subsequently, six main domains were identified after thorough analysis of the data. This paper will focus on two of these domains: “‘Doing’ Eating Problems,” and “Medicalizing Eating Problems.”

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper argues that hysteria shares numerous symptoms with other periods in western history during which women’s bodies and behaviors of women have been pathologized. It tracks these similarities by deconstructing the “symptoms” ascribed to different disorders applied to women, including neurosis in the 1950’s, personality disorders and post traumatic stress disorder in the 1980's, and in the latter 20th century, depression. Even while psychiatric literature describes depression as a disease that doesn’t discriminate, this study argues that the psychiatric discourse works specifically to dub women’s coping mechanisms and low productivity as dysfunctional. By drawing out the similarities among 20th century “female” disorders, the study contends that depression and depression-linked diagnoses have become normalized in the late 20th century. More, this cultural comfort with naming women’s distress as disorder has allowed for new “technologies” of behavioral discipline to arise, namely activities of self-scrutiny, self-diagnosis, an appetite for psychopharmaceutical drugs and self-conducted treatments, and finally, new diagnosis created by mainstream media.