Full Description
This book is the first of its kind to explore how women challenge the powerful sociocultural and gendered phenomenon of diet culture across the broad anti-diet movement and beyond. Showcasing the voices of over 150 everyday women, activists, and health professionals across Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, the author provides new insight into anti-diet practices while giving agency for women who remain main targets of diet culture. Using Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus as a novel starting point to develop a concept of the diet habitus, the author explores the possibility of a fragmented but unified diet counterculture. Drawing on feminist perspectives from women's and fat liberation movements, the author demonstrates that women's anti-diet practices are grounded in a combination of self and society; one that has the power to significantly re-shape the broad landscape of food and eating for women. This international book appeals to scholars, students, activists and health professionals interested in the intersections of the sociology of the body, fat studies, sociology of food and nutrition, social movements, health sociology, and women's studies.
Contents
Diet Culture and Counterculture: An Introduction.- Theorising Diet Culture: Confronting the Structure Versus Agency Debate.- Challenging Diet Culture: The Strategies of Social Movements.- Tracing Diet Culture: Unpacking Power and Domination.- Embodying Diet Culture: Radical Self-Care and the Diet Habitus.- Communicating Diet Culture: Anti-Diet Talk and Relations of Resistance.- Care as Anti-Diet Practice: Unifying a Fragmented Movement.- Diet Counterculture and the Future: Concluding Thoughts.
