Book Description

In this book an international group of authors explores the extent of and the socio-cultural factors underlying the ascendancy of eating disorders in some countries of the Mediterranean area in our own time. The authors express their local observations and struggles in an effort to map the impact of culture on the development of eating disorders. The topics reviewed echo back to each other and underscore the complexity of defining, measuring and possibly even changing culture. The book takes a 'transcultural' view, which is both 'trans' and 'cultural'. Realms transverse the academic terrain with chapters that pull on history, geography, biology and literature to set the stage for a review of cultural causes, with culture being the political, commercial and treatment settings potential eating disordered individuals find themselves in. The chapters demonstrate how control, the key cognitive construct of eating disorders, is impacted by the internal and external environment of the eating disordered individual. And if control is the bridge, shame is the dark sea that one struggles to avoid. Biological and psychological data from humans and animals is offered in an attempt to understand how efforts to maintain an honourable social ranking impacts food and body shape choices.