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Material environments and the shaping of anorexic embodiment : towards a materialist account of eating disorders

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Eli, Karin and Lavis, Anna (2022) Material environments and the shaping of anorexic embodiment : towards a materialist account of eating disorders. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 46 . pp. 344-363. doi:10.1007/s11013-021-09715-8

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11013-021-09715-8

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Abstract

Anorexia nervosa is a paradoxical disorder, regarded across disciplines as a body project and yet also an illness of disembodied subjectivity. This overlooks the role that material environments-including objects and spaces-play in producing embodied experiences of anorexia both within and outside treatment. To address this gap, this paper draws together two ethnographic studies of anorexia to explore the shared themes unearthed by research participants' engagements with objects that move across boundaries between treatment spaces and everyday lives. Demonstrating how the anorexic body is at once both phenomenologically lived and socio-medically constituted, we argue that an attention to materiality is crucial to understanding lived experiences. A materialist account of anorexia extends the literature on treatment resistance in eating disorders and offers a reconceptualisation of 'the body in treatment', showing how  objects and spaces shape, maintain, and even 'trigger' anorexia. Therefore, against the background of the high rates of relapse in eating disorders, this analysis calls for consideration of how interventions can better take account of eating disordered embodiment as shaped by material environments.

Item Type: Journal Article
Subjects: R Medicine > RC Internal medicine
Divisions: Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Medicine > Warwick Medical School > Health Sciences
Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Medicine > Warwick Medical School
SWORD Depositor: Library Publications Router
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): Anorexia nervosa , Anorexia nervosa -- Patients -- Mental health, Eating disorders -- Psychological aspects, Eating disorders—Diagnosis, Eating disorders -- Etiology
Journal or Publication Title: Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry
Publisher: Springer
ISSN: 1573-076X
Official Date: June 2022
Dates:
DateEvent
June 2022Published
7 April 2021Available
28 February 2021Accepted
Volume: 46
Page Range: pp. 344-363
DOI: 10.1007/s11013-021-09715-8
Status: Peer Reviewed
Publication Status: Published
Access rights to Published version: Open Access

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