Critical Feminist Approaches to Eating Dis/Orders

Over the past decade there have been significant shifts both in feminist approaches to the field of eating disorders and in the ways in which gender, bodies, body weight, body management and food are understood, represented and regulated within the dominant cultural milieus of the early twenty-first century. Critical Feminist Approaches to Eating Dis/Ordersaddresses these developments, exploring how eating disordered subjectivities, experiences and body management practices are theorised and researched within postmodern and post-structuralist feminist frameworks. Bringing together an international range of cutting-edge, contemporary feminist research and theory on eating disorders, this book explores how anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and obesity cannot be adequately understood in terms of individual mental illness and deviation from the norm but are instead continuous with the dominant cultural ideas and values of contemporary cultures. This book will be essential reading for academic, graduate and post-graduate researchers with an interest in eating disorders and critical feminist scholarship, across a range of disciplines including psychology, sociology, cultural studies and gender studies as well as clinicians interested in exploring innovative theory and practice in this field.

Helen Malson is a Reader in Social Psychology at the Centre for Appearance Research, University of the West of England, Bristol. Maree Burns is the co-ordinator of the Eating Difficulties Education Network in New Zealand.