PMID: 22574395May 12, 2012Paper

The weight of the self: care and compassion in Guatemalan dietary choices

Medical Anthropology Quarterly
Emily Yates-Doerr

Abstract

The Public Health Nutrition (PHN) community categorizes dietary-related chronic illnesses as "noncommunicable," fixing these afflictions within individual bodies where they are best managed by individual choices. Yet within clinical encounters in Guatemala, nutritionists and patients treat eating and dieting as relational, transmissible practices. Patients actively seek nutritionists' care, asserting their self-care attempts have failed and they need support from others; nutritionists meanwhile develop treatment plans that situate "personal choice" as lying outside the control of a solitary individual. This article moves between international policy-pedagogy and patient-nutritionist interactions to examine forms of personhood, responsibility, and rationalities of choice present in body weight-management practices in Guatemala. Although nutrition discourses might appear to exemplify how institutional (bio)power manifests through internalized self-monitoring and preoccupation for one's own self, I argue that within the lived experiences of "nutrition-in-action," the self-body of the patient becomes broadly conceived to include the nutritionist, the family, and the broader community.

References

Feb 1, 1978·International Journal of Law and Psychiatry·M Foucault
May 17, 2000·Medical Anthropology Quarterly·S Ferzacca
Jun 14, 2005·Social Science & Medicine·Thomas L Leatherman, Alan Goodman
Nov 19, 2008·Medical Anthropology Quarterly·Sigal Gooldin
Jan 15, 2009·Revista Panamericana De Salud Pública = Pan American Journal of Public Health·Corinna Hawkes, Anne Marie Thow

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Citations

Feb 18, 2014·Sociology of Health & Illness·Else Vogel, Annemarie Mol
Jun 20, 2014·Medical Anthropology Quarterly·Rebecca SeligmanElizabeth A Jacobs
Jun 9, 2016·Medical Anthropology Quarterly·Alexandra BrewisAmber Wutich
Apr 13, 2017·Medical Anthropology·Barbara Andersen
May 16, 2017·Anthropology & Medicine·Else Vogel
Mar 7, 2017·Medical Anthropology Quarterly·Iben M Gjødsbøl, Mette N Svendsen
Mar 16, 2017·Medical Anthropology Quarterly·Jessica Hardin
Jul 20, 2017·Anthropology & Medicine·Emily Yates-Doerr
Feb 28, 2019·Medical Anthropology Quarterly·Hannah Brown, Alex M Nading
Mar 9, 2018·Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry·Mattias Strand
Jul 25, 2017·North American Dialogue : Newsletter of the Society for the Anthropology of North America·Lesly-Marie BuerJennifer R Havens
Oct 13, 2015·Medical Anthropology·Kay FelderMichael Penkler
Mar 26, 2015·Medical Anthropology·Emily Yates-Doerr, Megan A Carney
Aug 15, 2018·Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry·Annemarie Samuels

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