Body Size

Annual Reviews is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Annual Review of Anthropology.

http://www.jstor.org

The Cultural Politics of Body Size Author(s): Helen Gremillion Source: Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 34 (2005), pp. 13-32Published by: Annual ReviewsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25064873Accessed: 31-03-2015 16:38 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of contentin a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

This content downloaded from 148.206.159.132 on Tue, 31 Mar 2015 16:38:50 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=annrevs

http://www.jstor.org/stable/25064873

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


The Cultural Politics

of Body Size

Helen Gremillion

Department of Gender Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 47405; email: [email protected]

Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2005.34:13-32

First published online as a

Review in Advance on

April 20, 2005

The Annual Review of

Anthropology is online at

anthro.annualreviews.org

doi: 10.1146/

annurev.anthro.3 3.070203.143814

Copyright 2005 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved

0084-6570/05/1021

0013S20.00

Key Words

embodiment, fatness, thinness, gender, agency

Abstract

Scholarly interest in body size has increased in concert with recent

efforts to shape and assess bodies in particular ways within industri

alized social contexts. Attending to both overt and covert references

to Eurocentric body projects, this chapter reviews literature in an

thropology, sociology, and cultural studies that addresses the cultural

politics of body size in various parts of the world. It begins with a

discussion of biocultural paradigms, which accept certain biom d

ical categories even when challenging

or reconfiguring their hege

monic power. Next is a survey of works analyzing body size within

"non-Western" groups as well as European and North American

subgroups. These studies often employ culturally powerful "West

ern" constructs as foils, an approach that risks cultural othering. The

analysis then turns to the extensive literature that unpacks dominant

Euro-American body practices and discourses. Here, diverse per

spectives on several key concerns in sociocultural anthropology

are

considered; concepts of culture and power, theories of the body and

embodiment, and understandings of human agency vary in instruc

tive ways. The chapter concludes with a review of scholarship on

postcolonial processes and representations that incorporates a criti

cal perspective on Eurocentric preoccupations with body size.

13



Contents

INTRODUCTION. 14

BIOCULTURAL PARADIGMS. 15

REPRESENTING CULTURAL DIFFERENCE. 16

UNRAVELING EURO-AMERICAN

CONSTRUCTS. 18

Theoretical Overview. 18

Embodiments of Power. 19

Fracturing Corporeal Norms. 21

The Cultural Constitution

of Bodies. 23

POSTCOLONIAL BODIES. 24

SUMMARY. 26

INTRODUCTION

Since the 1980s, the social sciences have

seen an increasing interest in the body, and

much anthropological scholarship on the cul

tural politics of body size bears a relation

ship to specific social concerns about bodies in

postindustrial contexts. Most of the literature

interrogates dominant Euro-American prac

tices and discourses. Some anthropologists

have offered or invited comparisons between

contemporary "Western" ideals of slimness

and "non-Western" preferences for large bod

ies; thus, "the West" appears either implic

idy or

explicidy as an

anomaly in need of

explanation. Juxtapositions of "West" and

"non-West," of dominant and minority

groups, or of "traditional" and "modern"

societies are unavoidably a

product of Eu

rocentric preoccupations that shape an in

terest in the topic at hand. This recursive

phenomenon potentially embeds representa

tions of otherness in knowledge formations

(Mohanty 1984, Said 1978). However, a num

ber of scholars are highly reflexive about such

epistemological questions in their approaches

to body size in various parts of the world.

Much of this work overtiy engages cultural

politics, requiring or

inciting critical reflec

tion about, for example, normalizing cultural

beliefs about the body, hierarchies of power and exclusion that are supported by and help

constitute these norms, and the cultural role

of scientific discourse about bodies.

Writings on body size often query received

concepts of social order and owe much to

sociologist Bryan Turner. Turner's book The

Body and Society (1984) inaugurated a call for

the inclusion of the body in sociology, which

generally ignored bodies until the late 1980s

when analyses of the body and embodiment

erupted into what has become a veritable

industry involving sociologists, anthropol

ogists, feminist scholars, and researchers in

cultural studies. While providing a historical account of the government of bodies in

Euro-American, Christian, gendered, and

capitalist contexts, Turner critically examines

various permutations of a nature/culture

dichotomy "a product of Western meta

physics" (Lock 1993, p. 135) evident in

Marx, Weber, and Durkheim. Drawing on the

work of Foucault, Turner refuses to stabilize

the body as a fixed object that can be used to

justify a given social system. He focuses on

dietary management, which "emerged out of

a theology of the flesh, developed through a

moralistic medicine and finally established it

self as a science of the efficient body" (Turner

1984, p. 3) and attends to certain "disorders

of women," including anorexia nervosa, which

he takes to be "cultural indications of the

problem of control" (p. 2) at different histor

ical moments. Turner's work and its powerful

influence point to the cultural and historical

specificity of scholarly interest in body size.

Turner's writings have been criticized

for retaining structuralist elements (Probyn

1987) and typological schemes (Wacquant 1995), as well as traces of the gendered power

relations and of the "natural body" Turner

seeks to problematize (Gremillion 2003, MacSween 1993). A burgeoning literature on

the body examines multiple discourses at work

in the specification or constitution of bod

ily forms and often highlights possibilities

14 Gremillion



for contesting dominant ideals and practices.

A small but important set of works in this

vein (discussed toward the end of this article)

brings a critical, self-reflexive perspective

on

the historically Eurocentric concern with

body size to analyses of the body in relation to postcolonial cultural encounters.

The vexed question of how to theorize

the body as sociocultural entity permeates

many analyses of body size. The perceived

dilemma here turns on a persistent dichoto

mization of nature and culture that raises

difficult questions about the role of human

agency in the making and interpretation of

bodily forms. However, a number of an

thropologists (Franklin 1997; Rabinow 1992; Strathern 1992a,b) and influential feminist

scholars in a range of fields (Butler 1990,

1993; Grosz 1994; Haraway 1991) have thor

oughly troubled the boundaries of "nature"

and "culture" (but without collapsing mate

rialities and meanings into one another), in

spiring nuanced understandings of how bod

ies, agents, symbols, and social structures

articulate.

This article reviews scholarship that ex

amines the meanings and/or power relations

entailed in producing, assessing, or

managing

bodies when size matters. It is limited to the

study of entire bodies (versus body parts) and,

for the most part, to works that include but

also move beyond ethnographic description when discussing body size. Although I focus on

anthropological literature, I also survey

writings from sociology and cultural studies

that engage pertinent themes for a topic

that increasingly calls for interdisciplinary

analysis.

BIOCULTURAL PARADIGMS

One trajectory in the study of body size brings sociocultural anthropology to bear on sci

entific discourse about the causes and ef

fects of fatness. This research allows for a

limited acceptance of medical categories and

truth claims, even as it challenges and at

tempts to reconfigure their hegemonic power.

In her introduction to a special issue of

Medical Anthropology on the topic "'Bigger is Better?' Biocultural Dynamics of Body

Shape," Ritenbaugh (1991) outlines a pop ular set of ideas along these lines. Noting that contributors wish to redefine "biocul

tural studies," moving it away from a strictly

adaptational or ecological model to include

conscious or purposive behavior steeped in

"cultural values, cultural ideals and myths"

(p. 174), Ritenbaugh seeks a recognition of

"feedback loops between biology and culture"

(p. 174) (see also McElroy 1990 and Landy 1990). Studies in this vein embrace certain

biom dical tenets for instance, the survival

value of adipose tissue, particularly in situa

tions of food scarcity while also suggesting that corporeal processes cannot always be sep

arated from cultural ones.

These studies take as a backdrop re

search that points to positive valuations of

corpulence in many parts of the world, par

ticularly for women (Brown & Konner 1987, Brown 1991), as well as research that links

fatness with high socioeconomic status

everywhere except among the vast majority

of women and many men in industrialized

contexts (Powdermaker 1960, Sobal &

Stunkard 1989). A central goal is to provide explanations for fatness that do not adhere

to medicalized, Euro-American standards of

"normal" and "healthy" body sizes. In part

on the basis of Turner's (1984) work, fixed

and universalized measures of obesity are

questioned and historicized (Pollock 1995a;

Ritenbaugh 1982, 1991). Some scholars des

ignate obesity as a "culture-bound syndrome"

(Ritenbaugh 1982); most distinguish it firmly from what is often a highly valued "fatness"

(Pollock 1995b, Cassidy 1991), which is

discussed widely as a signifier of beauty and

health and variously as a form of conspicuous

consumption (Brink 1989,1995), a projection of power (Cassidy 1991), an embodiment of

dependent and domestic femininity (Massara

1989), a symbol of well-being within and

between communities (Pollock 1995b), and a

collective boost of prestige (de Garine 1995).

www.annualreviews.org* The Cultural Politics of Body Size 15



Note that in one of the few anthropological treatments of dwarfism, Ablon (1984, 1988) takes a different approach with her focus on

processes of normalization and adaptation

for extremely short-statured individuals and

their families in a social context (the United

States) that values tallness. Ablon does not

problematize or elaborate alternatives to

biom dical paradigms except to suggest

ways that clinicians can avoid participat

ing in people's experiences of stigma and

marginalization.

Critiques of scientific discourse in this

literature for example, the debunking of

widely assumed causal links among obesity,

poor health, and particular eating habits

or activity levels (Pollock 1995a, Riten

baugh 1991) do not extend to a concep

tual reworking of a nature/culture duality

that underlies the biocultural paradigm. The

demarcation of incommensurable, if interact

ing, domains of biology and human interven

tion (Sobal 1991) analytically divides West

from non-West but still applies universalizing

understandings of biology to cross-cultural

study. Often, with a biocultural approach,

cultural meanings and practices surrounding

body size are seen as functional to survival and

reproduction.

However, efforts to understand the var

ied and sometimes unexpected ways in

which bodies "talk back" when manipulated

(Ritenbaugh 1991), and to situate these bod

ies in their sociocultural contexts, potentially

undermine biological determinism and con

cepts of culture as seamless. In addition,

biocultural research challenges the cultural

politics of some "modernization" studies (Pol

lock 1995b) and adaptational arguments [see the debate in Pelto & Pelto (1989) regard

ing analyses of stunted growth in contexts

of chronic food scarcity]. Specifically, bio

cultural perspectives can

provide important

interventions against positing passive "tradi

tional" groups and against the suggestion that

conditions and processes such as poverty and

urbanization are natural causes of bodily states

such as fatness and stature.

REPRESENTING CULTURAL DIFFERENCE

A small set of works detail the import of body size for non-Western groups, or within non

dominant subgroups in North American and

European contexts. This line of research relies

on explicit

or implicit cultural comparisons

to highlight the relativity of corporeal expe riences. Because relativism can invite the per

ception that fixed terms are being compared, cultural othering haunts some of this work. At

the same time, the in-depth study of a range

of bodily meanings and practices can expand

epistemological horizons, especially when re

ceived Euro-American categories and analyt

ical lenses are actively queried.

Some analysts highlight claims of cultural

difference by focusing on the "alternative"

spaces of subgroups or

seemingly bounded

cultural communities. In her discussion of

Sumo wrestlers' physiques, Hattori (1995) ar

gues that in spite of Japan's "modernization,"

"the main essence of Japanese traditions"

(p. 41) is projected onto wrestlers. Davis

(2003), in her study of diet and exercise

fads among women in a Newfoundland fish

ing community, also juxtaposes "traditional"

and "modern" practices and beliefs. She

argues that the gradual "superimposition"

of individualizing, slender body ideals on

preexisting norms of plumpness is strongly

mitigated by "collective, traditional commu

nity values" that come to "prevail over the

acculturative strivings of a few villagers" (p.

203). Nichter (2000) addresses ethnic differ

ences in her description of unique, lived ex

pressions of beauty and embodied selfhood

among African American girls. She suggests

that in their refusals to diet and watch what

they eat, these girls diverge from dominant

cultural messages about body size, drawing

instead on family and community traditions

to create flexible styles of self-presentation

that accommodate a range of sizes (see also

Parker et al. 1995). All of these authors ac

knowledge that minority or "local" groups are

not cordoned off from their wider contexts,

16 Gremillion



and yet they emphasize core meanings and

practices that are arrayed against otherwise

pervasive norms, which grants the groups in

question a solid otherness.

In contrast, several authors challenge the

idea that nondominant cultural discourses

about body size are seamlessly distinctive.

Ossipow (1995) shows that although vegetar ians in Geneva and in French-speaking parts

of Switzerland are singular in their pursuit of "lightness," "purity," and ecologically

re

sponsible consumption, they share with their

omnivorous counterparts who are also middle

or upper class forms of bodily care that defer

pleasure and eschew "heaviness." Also, vege

tarians can depict each other as too skinny and

ethereal, a representation which, ironically,

dovetails with some meat-eaters' descriptions

of vegetarians. Maurer (1999) points out that

proponents of the vegetarian movement, in

their efforts to recruit new members, re

spond to stereotypes of members as skinny

and unhealthy by neutralizing the potential for weight loss on a

vegetarian diet and pro

moting advocates "as healthful, moral exem

plars" (p. 220) regardless of body weight. Massara (1989) finds that unique understand

ings of obesity among Puerto Rican women

in Philadelphia articulate with dominant cul tural beliefs. The meanings of fatness for

the women in Massara's study do contra

dict mainstream beauty ideals in the United

States; even very significant weight gain af

ter marriage signals "'tranquility,' good ap

petite and health" (p. 12), indicating that

these women are "good wives and mothers"

whose husbands adequately provide for them.

However, Massara also finds that overeat

ing may conform to a more common expe

rience of "managing stress" when it substi

tutes for the expression of negative feelings

in the presence of family members. For some

married women, being overweight also allows

for a respectable, "'asexual' self-presentation"

(p. 299) outside the home, an understand

ing in keeping with the widespread belief

that thin is sexy. Massara's analysis points to

particular negotiations of contradictions

surrounding domesticity that are not them

selves specific to Puerto Rican women. She

leaves intact a medicalized definition of obe

sity but also questions understandings of its

causes and perpetuation that exclude cultural

meaning.

Becker (1995) and Sobo (1993, 1994) ex

amine the meaning of body size in a Fijian vil

lage and in rural Jamaica, respectively. Euro

American standards are presented as foils, es

pecially in Becker's work, but the fixity of norms that can appear as a result is tem

pered by multilayered accounts of corporeal ideals. Both authors contrast their findings

with mainstream cultural constructs in the

United States and Western Europe, where

bodies are vehicles for the expression of indi

vidual selves. For instance, Becker highlights a complacency among Fijians about shaping

one's own body, in spite of an intense inter

est in others' body sizes. According to these

authors, Fijians and Jamaicans view bodies in

terms of their embeddedness, or lack of em

beddedness, in collective care. Large bodies,

as long

as they

are not a result of hoard

ing, are seen as well-tended bodies that sig

nal a proper, ongoing, generous flow of goods

and services. In these accounts, bodies are

part of a cultural logic of noninstrumental ex

changes in general, which entail broad and

shared social "gains" rather than individuals'

net material gains (Mauss 1967). However, Sobo (1994) complicates this picture when

she identifies an "ethnophysiology" (p. 134) of

blood ties and bodily processes in Jamaica that can underscore economic and gender asym

metries. Becker sometimes posits an indi

vidualist/communal dichotomy and bounded

cultural systems ("Western" and "Fijian") but is able to unravel "Western folk models of

bodily experience as personal and circum

scribed" (p. 2) through cross-cultural study.

Popenoe's book Feeding Desire, an ethnog

raphy of fattening practices among Azawagh Arab women, contains only

an implicit

con

trast to Euro-American body ideals (Popenoe 2004). In fact, Popenoe questions Western

analytical distinctions between "value in an

www.annualreviews.org The Cultural Politics of Body Size 17



economic sense and value in a cultural sense"

(p. 130) in a way that renders problematic neat cross-cultural comparisons. She proposes

that the "laboriously fattened, voluptuous, im

mobile" female body "has such 'weight' in

Moor society precisely because it can merge

these two types of value, by taking men's pro

duction out in the world and turning it into

Arabness ..." (p. 130). Popenoe shows that

the creation of sexual desire, kinship, Islam, notions of health, the management of sexual

ity, and constructs of gender are all entailed in

fattening. She also offers a complex account of

purposive action, arguing that the same sex

uality that constrains women affords them an

important agency as well. Women, who con

trol the fattening process, contain and har

ness the "powerful forces of sex and desire not

just for themselves, but for society as a whole"

(p. 188). Popenoe details the simultaneously material and semiotic enactment of multi

ple meanings that are manifest in fat female

bodies.

In an essay entitled "The Aesthetics of

Substance," Strathern (1999) sketches a cross

cultural analysis of the accumulation and

dispersal of meaning processes that are actu

alized at times in body size as a way to reflect

on possible "solutions" to (Euro-American

perceptions of) an excess of meaning and im

ages in a postmodern world. Ethnographic

material from Papua New Guinea (published in the 1960s) becomes a tool for critical re

flection about, among other things, contem

porary "analytical work run riot" (p. 22). Strathern contrasts Etoro and Hagen social

"work" that disposes of or distributes mean

ing. For the Etoro, a "one-way" flow of "life

force" from older to younger (male) persons meant that bodies across the life span should

be small then large then small again. Fat

newborns were considered hoarding witches

and were usually smothered. For the Ha

gen, in comparison, exchanges between peo

ple were two way and were materialized in

detachable substances. In this case, male bod

ies alternated "not between fat and thin but

between decorated and undecorated state"

(p. 266). For the Hagen, fat babies were

prized, and small ones were problematic be

cause of a lack of substance. Strathern's anal

ysis does not take for granted the ontologi

cal status of substances; she argues that the

Hagen, unlike the Etoro, "invented" sub

stance. In this way, for Strathern, body size

as a reified "fact" becomes unstable. Regard

ing Euro-American concerns about excess,

she concludes that the release of meaning

including her own troubled response to the

story of an Etoro mother smothering a "witch

baby" is always a matter of social "work."

The highly reflexive and recursive charac

ter of Strathern's discussion precludes cultural

othering.

UNRAVELING EURO-AMERICAN CONSTRUCTS

Theoretical Overview

For those who have turned the anthropo

logical gaze squarely onto Euro-American

body practices and beliefs, Foucault has been

perhaps the most influential theorist. Writ ten against Marxist utopianism and Marx's

reliance on ideology

to account for subjectiv

ity, Foucault's work examines the constitution

of modern subjects through disciplinary "sub

jection" that operates on the body (Foucault

1979, 1980). His concepts of biopower and

panoptical surveillance are meant to render

inextricable one's self-regulation which ap

pears as a kind of freedom to control or

distinguish the self and various forms of

power/knowledge. Foucault's writings have

profoundly shaped anthropological and social

scientific inquiry into the discourses that make

up bodies and that circulate around body size.

Foucault has been criticized for fetishiz

ing the body and thus compromising its

denaturalization in his work (Fraser 1989, Hall 1985), ignoring the "contextual en

actments that embodiment always entails"

(Hayles 1999, p. 194) and slighting "experi ence" (McNay 1991). On all these counts, he

would appear to be at odds with a long history

18 Gremillion



of feminist scholarship aiming to politicize the

body to uncover possibilities for social trans

formation. However, in spite of his neglect

of gender (McNay 1992) and of the mate

rial specificities of sexual difference (Buder

1993, Grosz 1994), many feminist researchers

have embraced or reformulated Foucault's

work (McNay 1992, Sawicki 1991), notably his critique of expert knowledge that not only renders bodies "docile" but also itself pro duces specific (e.g., gendered) forms of docil

ity. Note that much of the literature exam

ining Euro-American constructs of body size

analyzes gendered specifications for "ideal"

bodies.

Scholars in cultural studies have incorpo

rated some of Foucault's ideas in their re

formulation of key Marxist concepts such as

class consciousness and historical materialism

(Hall 1985). In general, they have allowed

for more negotiating space within discursive

formations than Foucault's concepts permit.

Cultural studies scholars along with many

sociologists and anthropologists who write

about body size do not necessarily wed the

various threads of their analyses to the body

as tightly

as does Foucault, but Foucault's in

fluence strongly marks most of their writings.

Bourdieu's work has also been influen

tial in analyses of body size that denatu

ralize and unpack dominant Euro-American

discourses. Bourdieu's concept of "habitus"

(Bourdieu 1977), which draws on Mauss's

ideas about body "techniques" [Mauss 1973

(1935)], focuses attention on embodied ex

periences of normalization effected through

the repeated enactment of everyday body

practices. For Bourdieu, the habitus encodes

social-structural dictates that cannot be ab

stracted from the activities through which

they are made manifest. In keeping with

Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology (Merleau

Ponty 1962), Bourdieu argues that criti

cal consciousness about one's enculturation

through corporeal acts is, more often than not,

unavailable. As Lock (1993) has noted in this

series, "Bourdieu can be accused of ignoring

dissent and social transformation" (p. 137),

but scholars with varied commitments to ex

ploring processes of social change have been

shaped by his work.

Embodiments of Power

Many analysts focus on powerful Euro

American prescriptions regarding body size.

These writings explore the patterned effects

of culturally dominant body ideals on par ticular social groups. Ethnographic work in

this vein seeks to avoid overly abstract ac

counts of discursive or social-structural norms

by attending to people's lived, embodied

experiences.

Philosopher and cultural studies scholar

Bordo's Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western

Culture, and the Body (1993) is perhaps today the most widely read account of body ideals in

a capitalist context (the contemporary United

States). In her reading of slender feminin

ity and the problem of anorexia, Bordo, like

Turner, scrutinizes contradictory imperatives

for women to consume while also control

ling consumption through diet and exercise

imperatives that produce female bodies and

subjectivities as battleground sites for forg

ing "new" femininities against "older" (and

persistent) domestic and maternal ones. Fol

lowing a

long tradition in feminist analyses

of the body, Bordo argues that flesh gendered feminine is devalued in the pursuit of produc tive individualism and virtuous self-mastery.

Also, following Foucault, Bordo (1993) asserts

that because bodies are "constandy 'in the

grip'... of cultural practices" (p. 142) they can

never be considered "natural." Bordo's atten

tion to multiple media and familial discourses on

body size, considered in historical perspec

tive, has inspired a rich array of related schol

arship (e.g., Banet-Weiser 1999; Chapman 1997,1999; Hesse-Biber 1996; Ransom 1999; Stinson 2001). However, anthropologists do not often draw on Bordo extensively, in part

because her focus on cultural inscription is not

always conducive to ethnographic analysis.

Ethnographic research that takes up

the themes Bordo explores has worked to




particularize bodily experiences without nat

uralizing the body. Longhurst (2001) argues that pregnant women in Hamilton, New

Zealand, shy away from sport not primarily for

medical reasons, but rather because their bod

ies are constructed as ugly and large, whereas

sporting bodies are represented as attractive

and trim. Tyler & Abbott (1998) examine the

recruitment, training, and management of fe

male flight attendants, revealing strict body

weight requirements that are naturalized.

Workers are pressured to perform corpore

ally the image of an "efficient and effective air

line" (p. 441) (signified in part by slenderness), but the subordinating, self-monitoring, and

gendered labor required is not acknowledged.

Writing about everyday, normalizing embod

iments of health and fitness in the United

States, Crawford (1985) shows how the cap italist dualities of control and release, con

sumption and constraint figure into men's

and women's representations of Wellness. The

control of body size, especially for the fit

middle-class professionals interviewed in the

study, is a key

concern here. Exploring similar

terrain, and focusing more

centrally on body

size, Nichter & Nichter (1991) analyze the

cultural production of fit and "fat free" body ideals. They point to the guilty pleasures that

circulate around new injunctions to consume

and address power differentials that render

consumption problematic for some but not

for others. Note that Crawford and Nichter

& Nichter, like Bordo, critically analyze the

contradictions of consumer culture that are

(problematically) addressed through body dis

cipline; at the same time, their detailed ethno

graphic interviewing opens up space to con

sider lived experiences of fitness discourses, which vary by class as well as

gender.

Klein's study of male bodybuilders (1993) also examines the particularities of embod

ied experiences but nevertheless posits rather

totalizing American cultural norms of mas

culinity (which, he argues, are exaggerated

in bodybuilding). Klein recapitulates a mind

body split for which he indicts the sport when

he argues that bodybuilding entails defensive

compensations for neurotic insecurities, com

pensations that further alienate and also ob

jectify participants. He is convincing when

analyzing the subtleties of self-objectification

(through a Marxist framework). Klein exam

ines imperatives to maximize size that render

the body both the product and the prerequi site of a form of labor supposedly designed to

promote self-mastery.

Lester (1995) and Banks (1992, 1996)

pinpoint the role of religious asceticism in

women's experiences of anorexia, challenging not only individualized readings of the prob lem but also overly deterministic cultural ex

planations. While defining anorexia as unique to

twentieth-century industrialized contexts

(which emphasize thinness), Lester argues that "anorexics," "bulimics," and female re

ligious ascetics alike solidify their restrictively

gendered bodily boundaries through fasting and renegotiate the boundaries of the self

through the manipulation of food. In contrast,

Banks questions arguments about anorexia's

historical specificity and doubts the impor tance of thinness per se in her examination of

religious asceticism as an idiom for the expres

sion of "anorexic" beliefs and practices. Al

though Banks (1996) is interested in "building a

psychological-cultural theory of asceticism"

(p. 107), her analysis uses

psychoanalytic cate

gories to explain both "neurosis" and religion.

Nichter's book Fat Talk (2000) offers yet another approach

to slender body ideals that

does not rely on a notion of cultural inscrip

tion. Her study of high school girls in Tucson

revealed that white and Latina girls' expressed

desires to lose weight do not often trans

late into actual, sustained dieting although a

fairly constant watching of what one eats is

pervasive. Nichter argues that fat talk shapes

identities by affording girls some social possi bilities (e.g., group belonging) in lieu of actual

dieting (or even a belief that one should be

dieting). She also shows how body ideals are

shaped from the ground up by peer groups and mother-daughter relationships.

Whereas Nichter leaves intact a medical

model of "true" eating disorders, a number

20 Gremillion



of social scientists and cultural studies

scholars analyze scientific and/or psycho

logical discourses about eating problems as

themselves cultural products, denaturaliz

ing regulated bodies quite radically [Austin

1999; Eckermann 1997; Gremillion 1992;

Hepworth 1999; MacSween 1993; Maison

1991, 1998; Swartz 1985, 1987; Vogler 1993.

See also Gremillion (2001, 2003) (discussed

hereafter)]. These authors question any sharp distinction between eating disorders as med

ical conditions and the widespread, "normal"

management of diet and body size among

women and girls in particular. Most of this

literature focuses on anorexia and challenges

its status as a "pregiven medico-psychological

entity" (Maison 1991, p. 31). Several scholars

(Eckermann 1997; Gremillion 1992; Swartz

1985, 1987; Vogler 1993) point to the cultur

ally specific character of illness and health in

treatment, implicating science "in a culture

of disordered eating" (Austin 1999, p. 245)

by refusing to exempt diagnostic labels and

therapeutic processes from epistemological

scrutiny. Whereas some of these works em

phasize the negotiated status of anorexia as

a medicalized problem (Eckermann 1997, Swartz 1987), others invoke a model of social

scientific control that comes close to positing

bodies as moldable "clay" inscribed by socio

medical discourse (Gremillion 1992, Vogler 1993).

Writing about 1980s France, Bourdieu

(1984) shows how bodies manifest cultural

capital that confers sociopolitical "distinc

tion." He identifies body size as one im

portant element of class "taste," which he

describes as an embodied, "incorporated prin

ciple of classification" (p. 190). Bourdieu ar

gues that taste appears "in the seemingly most

natural features of the body.. .which express

in countless ways a whole relation to the body,

i.e., a way of treating it, caring for it, feeding

it, maintaining it, which reveals the deepest

dispositions of the habitus" (p. 190). For in

stance, masculine virility entails the consump

tion of large portions of meat, eaten "with

whole-hearted male gulps and mouthfuls"

(p. 191). For Bourdieu, bodies in every

day practice tend "to reproduce... the uni

verse of the social structure" along lines of

class, gender, occupational status, and age (p.

193). Bloor et al. (1998) analyzed a narrower,

but similar, subcultural (and for them dubi

ous) distinction between steroid "users" and

"abusers" among male bodybuilders in South

Wales, underscoring the somatic effects of any

given user's project to construct his body as

his "very own

chemistry experiment" (p. 28).

This approach eschews any reification of con

sciousness in the expression of sociocultural

power through manipulations of body size and seems to eclipse human agency to an extent.

Indeed, Bourdieu sometimes describes "taste"

and the habitus as agentive forces.

Fracturing Corporeal Norms

A number of scholars highlight people's active

interpretations of bodily states to emphasize latent or actual reworkings of corporeal ide

als. Foucault's writings that point to limited

and yet potentially transformative possibili ties for resistance (Foucault 1978, 1986) have

influenced much of this scholarship, which of ten examines the coexistence of people's

com

pliance with and resistance against discourses

that regulate bodies. The regulation of body

size is one key

concern here.

Sobal et al. (1999) spotlight lived experi ences and interpretations of weight in their

analysis of the various strategies brides-to

be employ to achieve weight loss, weight

management, or size acceptance for their

weddings, which are structured in innu

merable ways to prize and present them

as slender. The authors emphasize agentive

and often interactive processes for "doing

weight." Focusing more on subversions of

gendered embodiments, Entwhisde (2004)

explores how slim, heterosexual male models

refigure masculine ideals of body size, even

as they avoid "feminine" representations of

their bodies as cultivated. Kinnunen (1998) and Monaghan (1999) analyze the lived par ticularities of male bodybuilding and, like

www.annualreviews.org* The Cultural Politics of Body Size 21



Entwhistle, argue that masculine corporeal norms are not seamless or uniform. Kinnunen

notes a (largely implicit) disruption of gen der categories in the gym; for example, al

though large muscular bodies are quintessen

tially male, precontest dieting and steroid use can feminize these bodies in a num

ber of ways. Monaghan documents a range

of body ideals for weight-lifting men and

shows that maximizing body size is not al

ways a primary goal for them. Monaghan

(1999) states that notions about the embod

iment of male privilege in the building of

muscle do not by themselves adequately ac

count for the "variable project of bodybuild

ing" (p. 285). He follows Bourdieu in his

focus instead on "acquired ethnophysiology"

(p. 285).

Higate (1998) examines embodied resis

tance among clerks in Britain's Royal Air

Force, arguing that body size "intervenes in

everyday interaction" in ways rarely acknowl

edged discursively (p. 184). Although clerks

build up their bodies, reaffirming a "man of

action" image in a military context, they also

physically disrupt bodily expectations, chal

lenging the militarized surveillance and reg

ulation entailed in their incongruously femi

nized desk jobs through disorderly stunts at

work. Borrowing Shilling's ideas about the

body as an "absent presence" (Shilling 1993),

Higate allows for forms of resistance that are

"microinteractional" rather than consciously

articulated. He recognizes dissent in an ac

count that would otherwise resonate with

Bourdieu's explication of bodily praxis.

Several works question the totalizing

power of slender femininity as a

corporeal

ideal. Markula (2003) challenges the idea that

aerobics homogenously reproduces dominant

understandings of the desirable female body as trim, fat free, and sculpted. She emphasizes

resistances to be found only in an exploration

of aerobics as a lived endeavor but doubts the

power of individual resistance to effect social

change (see also Maguire & Mansfield 1998). Germov & Williams (1999), by comparison,

point to size acceptance among women as a

potentially transformative discourse appear

ing in the midst of strong pressure to con

form to a norm of thinness through dieting.

They argue that a research focus on people's

agency reveals that women not only actively

reproduce thin ideals, but can also actively

resist them. Rubin et al. (2003), seeking to

explain why African American women's (rela

tive) body satisfaction does not confer protec

tion from eating difficulties, suggest that al

though African American (and Latina) women

espouse a multi-faceted ethics of bodily ac

ceptance, care, and presentation that can be

called on to resist culturally powerful cor

poreal ideals, these women do not articu

late specific body aesthetics that diverge from

dominant norms of slender femininity. Urla

& Swedlund (1995) discuss subversive play with and deployments of Barbie dolls, perfor mances which can "make fun of the very no

tions of femininity and consumerism" (p. 306) that Barbie personifies through her excruciat

ingly thin, plastic fantasy body. As part of their

argument against readings of Barbie dolls as

uniformly harmful because of their unrealis

tic proportions, the authors detail the unsta

ble, racialized, ageist, nationalist, gendered,

and consumer-driven creation of medico

actuarial weight and height standards in the

United States.

Literature on female bodybuilding has fo

cused on participants' contradictory relation

ships to status quo constructions of gender

and body size. Serious competitors denatural

ize the equation of muscles with masculinity

but also accessorize performances with long

hair and nails (Bolin 2003) and even com

pensate for heavily muscled bodies with re

constructive breast and facial surgeries (Lowe

1998). Much of the writing that explores these

topics is characterized by a dichotomous pre

sentation of compliance and resistance, which

invites divergent conclusions: Some analyses

cast doubt on the promise of the sport

or of women's noncompetitive weight lifting

(Dworkin 2001,2003) to reconfigure norms

in any significant way, whereas others see the

"seeds of a somatic insurrection" (Bolin 2003,

22 Gremillion



p. 121). Bolin writes that bodybuilding for women "contributes to the ongoing, larger

redefinition of femininity and womanhood"

(p. Ill) (see also Klein 1994). Ethnographic research has been crucial here for revealing

backstage subversions that are often not visi

ble in front stage performances, and Schulze

(1997) suggests similar possibilities for read

ing fans' experiences. Lowe, however, empha

sizes the institutional and marketing politics of competitions that persistently co-opt oc

casionally disruptive muscular female bodies

"to fit back within the dominant hegemonic norms of femininity" (p. 159) particularly

through limits on body size and techniques that reduce the impact of large female bod

ies (see also Bolin 1992, 1998). It is per

haps a reification of muscle-bound resistances

that allows Bolin (2003) to assert that lift

ing weights is "the last frontier of the resis tance of the self" (p. 124), and to suggest that bodybuilding can move "beyond gen der" (p. 112) (see also Bolin 1997). Even so, her work, like Lowe's, convincingly articu

lates "that which lies... in the junctures and

crevasses" of power relations "where gender

is lived and negotiated" (Bolin 2003, p. 109).

The Cultural Constitution of Bodies

A few scholars writing about body size in the

United States or Europe explore the ways in

which embodied sociocultural constructs are

constituted, problematizing any clear distinc

tion between compliance to and resistance

against normative beliefs and practices. This

literature focuses on the mutual entailment of

multiple discourses that are taken up to form

bodies. Central to most of these analyses is

subjects' active agency, which is not, however,

reified or stabilized.

In his study of boxers and a boxing gym in Chicago's black ghetto, Wacquant (1995,

2004) explores recursive relations among bod

ily capital, labor, racial and class exclusions,

and gendered inequalities. Following Bour

dieu, Wacquant (2004) argues that boxing en

tails "an embodied practical reason that, being

lodged in the depths of the socialized organ ism, escapes the logic of individual choice"

(p. 98). He is clear, however, that the grad

ual and ongoing mastery of boxing rests on

an active, bodily self-transformation. Boxing,

which requires specific rituals of weight gain or loss and the manipulation of body size, is

governed by schemata that condition corpo

real, mental, and sociocultural fields at once.

Wacquant's own avid participation in boxing

training and competition as part of his study enlivens his claim that the meaning and power

of the sport are best understood as they

are

crafted through pugilistic bodies in action.

Monaghan (2002) also practices the trade

he studies in his ethnographic, sociological account of young white bouncers in south

west Britain. Monaghan borrows Wacquant's

notion of bodily capital to link sizeable and

violent (or potentially violent) masculinity to

"gendered, working-class constructions of oc

cupational competency" (p. 337). He shows

how both embodied and verbal enactments of

hierarchies among men (bouncers as well as

customers) hierarchies that highlight body size, weight, speed, height, and relative ability to manage physically challenging scenarios

help constitute the job of a bouncer and its

(limited) curbs on indiscriminate violence.

Like Wacquant, Monaghan positions bodies

as fleshy, symbolic, constrained, and agentive

all at once.

Bodies are equally complex for Rapp et al.

(2001), who analyze mutually constitutive so

cial and biom dical understandings of cer

tain conditions defined as genetic, including dwarfism and Marian's syndrome (which re

sults in unusual tallness). People identified

with these conditions in the United States are

powerfully shaped by naturalizing and differ

entiating discourses of genetic "identity poli tics" (p. 393), but notions of biological affinity are themselves products of "imagined

com

munities" of kinship. The authors stress the

point that the "biosocialities" (Rabinow 1992)

they examine are emergent and contested.

They are also multivalent, entailing intra

group ranking as well as inclusion, gendered




valuations of height, racialized and classed his

tories, and complex reproductive politics (on the latter point see also Taussig et al. 2003).

Gremillion (2001,2003) also identifies the

thoroughly sociocultural character of scien

tific beliefs and practices in her study of a

psychiatric program for the treatment of

anorexia nervosa. Situating both anorexia and

its treatment in specific, socially unequal

terrains of late-twentieth-century U.S. con

sumer society, and focusing

on the every

day crafting of persons in the clinic, Feeding Anorexia (2003) shows how mainstream thera

pies participate unwittingly in culturally dom

inant ideals of gender, individualism, physi cal fitness, and family life that help constitute

anorexia's conditions of possibility. Gremil

lion complicates standard representations of

"eating disordered" individuals (as, for ex

ample, white and middle class) by explor

ing the othering of "nonstandard" individuals

that is inscribed into narrow profiles, which

thereby exclude people by definition (see also

Thompson 1994). Along with Eckermann

(1997) and Lester (1997), Gremillion argues that formulating viable treatment alternatives

requires attention to anorexic embodiments

as agentive, if not self-conscious, articulations

of multiple and contested cultural meanings.

Sociologist Becky Thompson (1994) moves outside the clinic in her analysis of

women's troubles with hunger and food.

A Hunger So Wide and So Deep is the only

book-length study of eating problems and

conflicts about body size across divergent ethnicities, ages, classes, religious affiliations,

and sexualities in the United States. Life

history interviews reveal that widespread

pressures to be slim articulate with narratives

of whitening, assimilation, moving up the

social ladder, and "grooming girls to be

heterosexual" (p. 37). However, Thompson

questions any monolithic reading of body size, arguing that "dissatisfaction with ap

pearance often serves as a stand-in for topics

that are still invisible" (p. 11) such as racism,

ageism, poverty, and sexual abuse. Although

relying on the notion of eating problems as

"coping mechanisms" (p. 6), Thompson's account is thoroughly depathologizing and

situated in overlapping fields of power and

cultural meaning that constitute people's lives

(and shape ethnographic interviews as well). In her account of how "fat-identified lan

guage communities" (LeBesco 2004, p. 46) rework and subvert the signifying practices of fatness, LeBesco (2004) interrogates the

production of meaning surrounding iden

tities that are stigmatized on the basis of

body size and simultaneously appreciates the

"physical immanence of fat" (p. 5) and its

real effects. Instead of celebrating or criticiz

ing particular forms of subjectivity, LeBesco

draws on Butler's (1990, 1993) idea that

bodies' surfaces and boundaries are contin

ually politically crafted within social fields

of inequality. LeBesco argues that "nego

tiating questions of fat identity involves a

fluid, alternating pattern of invocation and

refusal of mainstream tropes of health, na

ture, and beauty" (p. 123) and states that

her goal is "the analysis of and critical in

tervention in the rules and practices guiding the entrance of the fat subject into discursive

agency" (p. 123). Inspired by Grosz (1994), she claims that "there is never a neat sepa

ration between the power we promote and

that which we oppose" (p. 124) (see Honeycutt 1999 for a related analysis).

POSTCOLONIAL BODIES

A few works focus on body size in the con

text of postcolonial cultural encounters. This

literature brings a critical perspective

on Eu

rocentric concerns with body size to analy

ses of "globalization," commodity culture, and

nationalist struggles. Key to the writings re

viewed here is an interrogation of analytic

splits between Western and non-Western cul

tural forms, highlighted through attention to

bodily practices and significations as intimate

markers of cultural identities in (often vexed) transformation (see Comaroff & Comaroff

1992 for an elaboration of this approach). As

with scholarship examining the constitution

24 Gremillion



of bodies in the United States and Europe, these works radically challenge the idea that

bodies are stable entities, even as they insist

on corporeality's sociocultural power.

Alter (1992, 1993, 1994, 2000, 2004) ar

gues that wrestlers' lives and discourses in

northern India involve a complex negotia

tion of Indian "authenticity" and postcolonial

"modernity." Wrestlers, with their built-up,

strong, and celibate bodies, at once cham

pion a masculine form of "somatic nation

alism"; protest many of the perceived effects

of Indian independence; imagine progressive

change in part through a Utopian vision of a

precolonial past; and deploy colonialist rep resentations of the babu (office clerk) as weak

and effete (representations that have, histori

cally, inspired the making of "manly" bodies

in India in several contexts). Alter (2004) also

shows how the conflicted "Indian-ness" of the

sport is manifest in tensions between wrestling

practices and representations of wrestling in

popular literature. Interestingly, size matters

differently in the two cases. In the lived ex

perience of crafting a wrestling identity, size

per se is less important than is embodied so

cial and spiritual virtue (Alter 1992), which the

small and thin Ghandi can be said to exemplify (Alter 1994). In contrast, popular representa

tions of wrestling create physical ideals that

reflect a Cartesian logic and are impossibly out of reach: The wrestling body is as "huge as a mountain" and is compared with an "im

movable granite ridge" (Alter 2004, p. 26). For

Alter, rhetoric and practice articulate in ways

that challenge any neat separation between

or conflation of "Western" and "Indian," or

body and text.

Spielvogel (2003) shows how young

Japanese women's consumption of aerobics,

an American import, simultaneously repro

duces and subverts commodified notions of

female beauty and gendered power relations.

Aerobicizers strive to lose weight, which

aligns them with a new beauty industry and can also disrupt social and kin ties that are

indexed through "average" body size. Mean

while, members of fitness clubs frequently

quit in part because of clubs' seemingly con

tradictory attempts to balance health, thin

ness, disciplined body work, and relaxation, the latter reflected in participants' occasional

"indulgent" eating, drinking, and smoking.

Although she attends to local specifications of

late-capitalist discourses, Spielvogel at times

utilizes an "East versus West" divide, which

she criticizes. Munshi (2004) focuses more

squarely on

reconfigurations of national iden

tities in her study of contemporary Indian

beauty pageants. Beauty queens exemplify the

commodification of slender, taut, and sculpted female bodies since economic liberalization,

which provides a context for challenging the

heretofore accepted idea that fatness (after

marriage) signals prosperity. Very different

objections to pageants from the Hindu right and the women's movement are met with a

general public perception that beauty contes

tants are successfully both global and "Indian

at heart" (p. 172). Munshi points to shift

ing discourses of femininity that (re)constitute women's subjectivities and bodies in fields of

power. Similarly, Kim's account of women's

body discipline in Korea's consumer society

shows how Neo-Confucian "techniques of

body management" (Kim 2003, p. 107) are

implicated in the recent production of slender

body norms, which are inflected by changing

hierarchies of age, race, class, and national be

longing as well as

gender.

Weiss (1992) analyzes a relatively new

wasting disorder of infants and children

among the Haya of northwest Tanzania, who

call the problem (and attribute it to) "plas tic teeth." Weiss argues that plastic teeth are

a vivid example of how the "world system" is actualized in culturally specific embodied

meanings. Plastic is a ubiquitous commodity

that "obscures its production process" (p. 548)

and is viewed as cold and durable. In con

trast, properly generated teeth are thought to emerge through "a carefully mediated se

quence of events and actions" (p. 548) that are symbolically associated with feeding, fat

tening, and sexual activity, all of which gener ate heat through fluid interpersonal relations.




Plastic teeth appear as potentially fatal bodily "infections" with lives of their own in individ

uals who, like those suffering from AIDS, are

"isolated from the processes through which

personal well-being is achieved" (p. 546), an

isolation signified by extreme weight loss.

Weiss concludes that the Haya are

"produc

ing themselves" in the image of a world with

diseases, socioeconomic forces, and objects

that are increasingly out of their control (p. 549).

Scheper-Hughes's book Death Without

Weeping (1992) unravels the cultural and

economic politics of devastating chronic mal

nutrition in a Brazilian shantytown. Scheper

Hughes takes seriously both material bodies

and cultural meanings but rejects accounts

of hunger that are either brutely physical or

purely symbolic, or that render persons pas

sive. She shows how stunted growth, "ner

vous hunger," childhood and infant death, and

socioculturally shaped indifference to death

result from the neocolonial production of

poverty, seemingly all-powerful (but in fact

dangerous) formulas and medicines, and dis

courses of disposable personhood. Although most adult shantytown dwellers "interpret

their small stature and more delicate frames

in racialist terms as evidence of the intrinsic

'weakness' of their 'breed'" (p. 156), Scheper

Hughes contends that their illness also signals

"an act of refusal, an oblique form of protest"

that contains "the elements necessary for cri

tique and liberation" (p. 213). Throughout the

book, Scheper-Hughes situates both small,

suffering bodies and anthropological work in

the context of historically particular, cross

cultural encounters that continually produce

and transform the political conditions of

life.

SUMMARY

A review of the literature on the cultural poli

tics of body size reveals a range of approaches

to analyzing corporeal ideals. Considered col

lectively, these works point to abiding and

contested concerns in sociocultural anthro

pology, raising key questions about theoriz

ing the body and human agency and about the

goals and politics of cross-cultural study. I try to show that the topic of body size is potent for analyzing shifting

constructs of nature and

culture as well as cultural difference, both "on

the ground" and in academic representations.

I also suggest that scholars writing about body size who examine and unpack the conditions

of possibility for their research are the most

likely to be attuned to complex imbrications of

materiality, cultural meanings, and sociopolit

ical structures. It is particularly important to

acknowledge that recent scholarly interest in

the shaping and signification of bodily forms

is linked to culturally and historically specific

preoccupations regarding the production, as

sessment, and management of bodies. When

body size matters, the cultural politics of un

derstanding why matters as well.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank Nigel Pizzini and Radhika Parameswaran for their helpful consultations. A hearty thanks goes also to Spring Duvall and Moira Smith for their research assistance.

LITERATURE CITED

Ablon J. 1984. Little People in America: The Social Dimensions ofDwarfom. New York: Praeger Ablon J. 1988. Living with Difference: Families with Dwarf Children. New York: Praeger Alter JS. 1992. The Wrestlers Body: Identity and Ideology in North India. Berkeley: Univ. Calif.

Press

Alter JS. 1993. The body of one color: Indian wresding, the Indian state, and Utopian semantics.

Cult. Anthropol. 8(l):49-72

26 Gremillion



Alter JS. 1994. Somatic nationalism: Indian wrestling and militant Hinduism. Mod. Asian Stud.

28(3):557-88 Alter JS. 2000. Subaltern bodies and nationalist physiques: Gama the great and the heroics of

Indian wrestling. Body Soc. 6(2):45-72 Alter JS. 2004. Body, text, nation: writing the physically fit body in post-colonial India. See

Mills & Sen 2004, pp. 16-38

Austin S. 1999. Fat, loathing and public health: the complicity of science in a culture of disor

dered eating. Cult. Med. Psychiatry 23:245-68

Banet-Weiser S. 1999. The Most Beautiful Girl in the World: Beauty Pageants and National Identity.

Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press

Banks CG. 1992. "Culture" in culture-bound syndromes: the case of anorexia nervosa. Soc. Sei.

Med. 34(8):867-84 Banks CG. 1996. "There is no fat in heaven": religious asceticism and the meaning of anorexia

nervosa. Ethos 24(1): 107-3 5

Becker AE. 1995. Body, Self, and Society: The View from Fiji. Philadelphia: Univ. Penn. Press

Bloor M, Monaghan LF, Dobash RP, Dobash RE. 1998. The body as a chemistry experiment: steroid use among South Wales bodybuilders. See Nettleson & Watson 1998, pp. 27

44

Bolin A. 1992. Vandalized vanity: feminine physiques betrayed and portrayed. In Tatoo, Torture,

Adornment, and Disfigurement: The Denaturalization of the Body in Culture and Text, ed. F

Mascia-Lees, P Sharpe, pp. 79-99. Albany: State Univ. N.Y. Press

Bolin A. 1997. Flex appeal, food, and fat: competitive bodybuilding, gender, and diet. See

Moore 1997, pp. 184-208

Bolin A. 1998. Muscularity and femininity: women bodybuilders and women's bodies in culturo

historical context. In Fitness as a Cultural Phenomenon, ed. KAE Volkwein, pp. 187-212.

New York: Waxmann M nster

Bolin A. 2003. Beauty or the beast: the subversive soma. See Bolin & Granskog 2003, pp. 107-29

Bolin A, Granskog J, eds. 2003. AthleticIntruders: Ethnographic Research on Women, Culture, and

Exercise. Albany: State Univ. N.Y. Press

Bordo S. 1993. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Berkeley: Univ.

Calif. Press

Bourdieu P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press

Bourdieu P. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, UK:

Cambridge Univ. Press

Brink PJ. 1989. The fattening room among the Annang of Nigeria. Med. Anthropol. 12(1):131 43

Brink PJ. 1995. Fertility and fattening: the Annang fattening room. See de Garine & Pollock

1995, pp. 71-85

Brown PJ. 1991. Culture and the evolution of obesity. Human Nature 2(1):31 57

Brown PJ, Konner M. 1987. An anthropological perspective on obesity. Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sei.

499:29-46

Butler J. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge Butler J. 1993. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex". New York: Routledge

Cassidy CM. 1991. The good body: when big is better. Med. Anthropol. 13(3):181-213

Chapman GE. 1997. Making weight: light-weight rowing, technologies of power, and tech

nologies of the self. Sociol. Sport J. 14:205-23




Chapman GE. 1999. Medical discourse in body image: reconceptualizing the differences be

tween women with and without eating disorders. See Sobal & Maurer 1999a, pp. 73

87

Comaroff J, Comaroff J. 1992. Ethnography and the Historical Imagination. Boulder, CO: West

view

Crawford R. 1985. A cultural account of "health": self-control, release, and the social body.

In Issues in the Political Economy of Health Care, ed. JB McKinlay, pp. 60-103. New York:

Tavistock

Davis D. 2003. Changing body aesthetics: diet and exercise fads in a Newfoundland outport

community. See Bolin & Granskog 2003, pp. 201-26

de Garine I. 1995. Sociocultural aspects of the male fattening sessions among the Massa of

Northern Camaroon. See de Garine & Pollock 1995, pp. 45-70

de Garine I, Pollock NJ, eds. 1995. Social Aspects of Obesity. Luxembourg: Gordon and Breach

Dworkin SL. 2001. Holding back: negotiating the glass ceiling on women's muscular strength. Sociol. Perspect. 44(3):333-50

Dworkin SL. 2003. A woman's place is in the... cardiovascular room? Gender relations, the

body, and the gym. See Bolin & Granskog 2003, pp. 131-58

Eckermann L. 1997. Foucault, embodiment, and gendered subjectivities: the case of voluntary

self-starvation. In Foucault, Health and Medicine, ed. AR Petersen, R Bunton, pp. 151-69.

London: Roudedge Entwhisde J. 2004. From catwalk to catalog: male fashion models, masculinity, and identity.

In Cultural Bodies: Ethnography and Theory, ed. H Thomas, J Ahmed, pp. 55-75. Maiden, MA: Blackwell

Foucault M. 1978. The History of Sexuality. An Introduction. New York: Vintage. Vol. 1

Foucault M. 1979. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Foucault M. 1980. Body/power. In Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings,

ed. C Gordon, pp. 109-33. New York: Pantheon

Foucault M. 1986. The Care of the Self. The History of Sexuality. New York: Vintage. Vol. 3

Franklin S. 1997. Embodied Progress: A Cultural Account of Assisted Conception. London: Roudedge Fraser N. 1989. Foucault's body language:

a posthumanist political rhetoric? In Unruly Practices:

Power, Discourse, and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory, pp. 55-66. Minneapolis: Univ.

Minn. Press

Germov J, Williams L. 1999. Dieting women: self-surveillance and the body panopticon. See

Sobal & Maurer 1999b, pp. 117-32

Gremillion H. 1992. Psychiatry as social ordering: anorexia nervosa, a

paradigm. Soc. Sei. Med.

35(1):57-71 Gremillion H. 2001. In fitness and in health: crafting bodies in the treatment of anorexia

nervosa. S/gw27(2):381-414 Gremillion H. 2003. Feeding Anorexia: Gender and Power at a Treatment Center. Durham, NC:

Duke Univ. Press

Grosz EA. 1994. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press

Hall S. 1985. Signification, representation, ideology: Althusser and the post-structuralist de

bates. Crit. Stud. Mass Commun. 2(2):91 114

Haraway D. 1991. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Roudedge Hattori K. 1995. Physique of Sumo wresders in relation to some cultural characteristics of

Japan. See de Garine & Pollock 1995, pp. 31-^3

Hayles K. 1999. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Infor matics. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press

28 Gremillion



Hepworth J. 1999. The Social Construction of Anorexia Nervosa. London: Sage Hesse-Biber SJ. 1996. Am I Thin Enough Yet? The Cult of Thinness and the Commercialization of

Identity. New York: Oxford Univ. Press

Higate P. 1998. The body resists: everyday clerking and unmilitary practice. See Nettleson &

Watson 1998, pp. 180-98

Honeycutt K. 1999. Fat world/thin world: "fat busters," "equivocators," "fat boosters," and

the social construction of obesity. See Sobal & Maurer 1999a, pp. 165-81

Kim T. 2003. Neo-Confucian body techniques: women's bodies in Korea's consumer society.

BodySoc. 9(2):97-113 Kinnunen T. 1998. "Deep inside every man desires the V-body, for the looks": formations of

masculinities in bodybuilding. Ethnologia Fennica 26:4-16

Klein AM. 1993. Little Big Men: Bodybuilding Subculture and Gender Construction. Albany: State

Univ. N.Y. Press

Klein AM. 1994. The cultural anatomy of competitive women's bodybuilding. See Sault 1994,

pp. 76-104

Landy D. 1990. Toward a biocultural medical anthropology. Med. Anthropol. Q. 43:54 58 LeBesco K. 2004. Revolting Bodies? The Struggle to Redefine Fat Identity. Amherst: Univ. Mass.

Press

Lester R. 1995. Embodied voices: women's food asceticism and the negotiation of identity. Eife23(2):187-222

Lester R. 1997. The (dis)embodied self in anorexia nervosa. Soc. Sei. Med. 44(4):479-89 Lock M. 1993. Cultivating the body: anthropology and epistemologies of bodily practice and

knowledge. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 22:133-55

Longhurst R. 2001. Trim, taut, teriffic, and pregnant. In Pleasure Zones: Bodies, Cities, Spaces,

ed. D Bell, J Binnie, R Holliday, R Longhurst, R Peace, pp. 1-28. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse Univ. Press

Lowe MR. 1998. Women of Steel: Female Bodybuilders and the Struggle for Self Definition. New

York: N.Y. Univ. Press

MacSween M. 1993. Anorexic Bodies: A Feminist and Sociocultural Perspective on Anorexia Nervosa.

London: Routledge

Maguire J, Mansfield L. 1998. "No body's perfect": women, aerobics, and the body beautiful.

Sociol. Sport J. 15:109-37 Maison H. 1991. Hidden a-genders: the place of multiplicity and gender in theorizations of

anorexia nervosa. BPS Psychol. Women Sect. Newsl. Winter: 31-42

Maison H. 1998. The Thin Woman: Feminism, Post-structuralism and the Social Psychology of Anorexia Nervosa. London: Routledge

Markula P. 2003. Postmodern aerobics: contradiction and resistance. See Bolin & Granskog

2003, pp. 53-78 Massara EB. 1989. Qu Gordita! A Study of Weight Among Women in a Puerto Rican Community.

New York: AMS Press Maurer D. 1999. Too skinny or vibrant and healthy? Weight management in the vegetarian

movement. See Sobal & Maurer 1999b, pp. 209-29

Mauss M. 1967. The Gift. New York: Norton Mauss M. 1973 (1935). Techniques of the Body. Econ. Soc. 2:70-88

McElroy A. 1990. Biocultural models in studies of human health and adaptation. Med. Anthropol. Q. 42:43-65

McNay L. 1991. The Foucaultian body and the exclusion of experience. Hypatia 6(3): 125-39

McNay L. 1992. Foucault and Feminism: Power, Gender, and the Self Boston: Northeastern Univ.

Press




Merleau-Ponty M. 1962. Phenomenology of Perception. New York: Roudedge Mills JH, Sen S, eds. 2004. Confronting the Body: The Politics of Physicality in Colonial and Post

Colonial India. London: Anthem

Mohanty CT. 1984. Under Western eyes: feminist scholarship and colonial discourses. Bound

ary 2 13(l):333-58

Monaghan LF. 1999. Creating 'the perfect body': a variable project. Body Soc. 5(2 3):267 90

Monaghan LF. 2002. Hard men, shop boys and others: embodying competence in a masculinist

occupation. Sociol. Rev. 50(3):3 34 55 Moore PL, ed. 1997. Building Bodies. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press

Munshi S. 2004. A perfect 10 'modern and Indian': representations of the body in beauty

pageants and the visual media in contemporary India. See Mills & Sen 2004, pp. 162

80 Netdeton S, Watson J, eds. 1998. The Body in Everyday Life. London: Roudedge Nichter M. 2000. Fat Talk: What Girls and their Parents Say about Dieting. Cambridge, MA:

Harvard Univ. Press

Nichter M, Nichter M. 1991. Hype and weight. Med. Anthropol 13(3):249-84

Ossipow L. 1995. Vegetarianism and fatness: an undervalued perception of the body. See de

Garine & Pollock, pp. 127-43

Parker S, Nichter M, Nichter M, Vuckovic N, Sims C, Ritenbaugh C. 1995. Body image and

weight concerns among African American and white adolescent females: differences that

make a difference. Hum. Organ. 54(2): 103-14 Pelto G, Pelto P, eds. 1989. Small but healthy symposium papers. Human Organ. 48(1): 11

52 Pollock NJ. 1995a. Introduction: an overview of obesity issues across several cultures. See de

Garine & Pollock 1995, pp. xiii-xxxiii Pollock NJ. 1995b. Social fattening patterns in the Pacific the positive side of obesity. A

Nauru case study. See de Garine & Pollock. 1995, pp. 87-106

Popenoe R. 2004. Feeding Desire: Fatness, Beauty, and Sexuality Among a Sah aran People. London:

Roudedge Powdermaker H. 1960. An anthropological approach to the problem of obesity. Bull. N.Y.Acad.

Med. 36(5):286-95

Probyn E. 1987. The anorexic body. In Body Invaders: Panic Sex in America, d. A Kroker, M

Kroker, pp. 201-11. New York: St. Martin's

Rabinow P. 1992. Artificiality and enlightenment: from sociobiology to biosociality. In Incor

porations, ed. J Crary, S Kwinter, pp. 234-53. New York: Urzone

Ransom E. 1999. Creating "uniformity": the construction of bodies in women's collegiate cross

country. See Sobal & Maurer 1999a, pp. 183-206

Rapp R, Heath D, Taussig K-S. 2001. Genealogical dis-ease: where hereditary abnormality, biom dical explanation, and family responsibility meet. In Relative Values: Reconfiguring

Kinship Studies, ed. S Frankin, S McKinnon, pp. 384-409. Durham, NC: Duke Univ.

Press

Ritenbaugh C. 1982. Obesity as a culture-bound syndrome. Cult. Med. Psychiatry 6347

61

Ritenbaugh C. 1991. Body size and shape: a dialogue of culture and biology. Med. Anthropol.

13(3):173-80 Rubin LR, Fitts ML, Becker AE. 2003. "Whatever feels good in my soul": body ethics and

aesthetics among African American and Latina women. Cult. Med. Psychiatry 27(1):49 75

50 Gremillion



Said E. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books

Sault NL, ed. 1994. Many Mirrors: Body Image and Social Relations. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press

Sawicki J. 1991. Disciplining Foucault: Feminism, Power, and the Body. New York: Roudedge

Scheper-Hughes N. 1992. Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Every day Life in Brazil. Berke

ley: Univ. Calif. Press

Schulze L. 1997. On the muscle. See Moore 1997, pp. 9-30

Shilling C. 1993. The Body and Social Theory. London: Sage Sobal J. 1991. Obesity and socioeconomic status: a framework for examining relationships

between physical and social variables. Med. Anthropol. 13(3):2 31^47

Sobal J, Bove C, Rauschenbach B. 1999. Weight and weddings: the social construction of

beautiful brides. See Sobal & Maurer 1999a, pp. 113-35

SobalJ, Maurer D, eds. 1999a. Interpreting Weight: The Social Management of Fatness and Thinness.

New York: Aldine de Gruyter SobalJ, Maurer D, eds. 1999b. Weighty Issues: Fatness and Thinness as Social Problems. New York:

Aldine de Gruyter

SobalJ, Stunkard AJ. 1989. Socioeconomic status and obesity: a review of the literature. Psychol. Bull. 105(2):260-75

Sobo E. 1993. One Blood: The Jamaican Body. Albany, NY: State Univ. NY. Press

Sobo E. 1994. The sweetness of fat: health, procreation, and sociability in rural Jamaica. See

Sault 1994, pp. 132-54

Spielvogel L. 2003. Working Out in Japan: Shaping the Female Body in Tokyo Fitness Clubs.

Durham, NO. Duke Univ. Press

Stinson KM. 2001. Women and Dieting Culture: Inside a Commercial Weight Loss Group. New

Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press

Strathern M. 1992 a. After Nature: English Kinship in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press

Strathern M. 1992b. Reproducing the Future: Anthropology, Kinship, and the New Reproductive

Technologies. New York: Roudedge Strathern M. 1999. Property, Substance, and Effect: Anthropological Essays

on Persons and Things.

London: Athlone

Swartz L. 1985. Anorexia nervosa as a culture-bound syndrome. Soc. Sei. Med. 20(7):72 5-30

Swartz L. 1987. Illness negotiation: the case of eating disorders. Soc. Sei. Med. 24(7):613 18

Taussig K-S, Rapp R, Heath D. 2003. Flexible eugenics: technologies of the self in the age of

genetics. In Genetic Nature/Culture: Anthropology and Science Beyond the Two-Culture Divide,

ed. A Goodman, D Heath, S Lindee, pp. 58-76. Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press

Thompson BW. 1994. A Hunger So Wide and So Deep: American Women Speak Out on Eating Problems. Minneapolis: Univ. Minn. Press

Turner BS. 1984. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory. London: Sage

Tyler M, Abbott P. 1998. Chocs away: weight watching in the contemporary airline industry.

5oc/o%32(3):433-50 Urla J, Swedlund JC. 1995. The anthropometry of Barbie: unsettling ideals of the feminine

body in popular culture. In Deviant Bodies, ed. J Terry, J Urla, pp. 277-313. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press

Vogler RJ. 1993. The Medicalization of Eating: Social Control in an Eating Disorders Clinic. Green

wich, CT: JAI

Wacquant L. 1995. Pugs at work: bodily capital and bodily labour among professional boxers.

Body Soc. l(l):65-93




Wacquant L. 2004. Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer. Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ.

Press

Weiss B. 1992. Plastic teeth extraction: the iconography of Haya gastro-sexual affliction. Am.

Ethnol. 19(3):538-52

RELATED RESOURCES

Changing Constructions of Sexuality and Risk: Migrant Mexican

Women Farmworkers in California

X Casta eda, P Zavella

Journal of Latin American Anthropology. 2003. Volume 8, Issue 2, pages 126-51

"Bumps and Boobs": Fatness and Women's Experiences of Pregnancy.

S Earle

Women's Studies International Forum. 2003. Volume 26, Issue 3, pages 2^5-52

Fertile, Plump, and Strong: The Social Construction of the Female Body in Low-Income Cairo

F Ghannam

Monographs in Reproductive Health. No. 3. 1997. Cairo: The Population Council

Fat: The Anthropology of an Obsession

Edited by D Kulick, A Meneley 2005. New York: Tarcher/Penguin

Estranged Bodies and Vietnamese Identities

M Thomas

Australian Journal of Anthropology. 1998. Volume 9, Issue 1, pages 74-88

In-Corporations: Food, Bodies and Organizations

G Valentine

Body and Society. 2002. Volume 8, Issue 2, pages 1-20

52 Gremillion



Body Size

Documents

Transcript of Body Size