Overview
Access this book
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Other ways to access
Table of contents (14 chapters)
-
Front Matter
-
Introduction: The Belly and Beyond
-
Diet, Digestion, Excretion
-
Front Matter
-
-
Culture and the Abdomen
-
Front Matter
-
-
Fat and Society
-
Front Matter
-
-
Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
Reviews
"The editors of Cultures of the Abdomen have assembled an imaginative mix of social, cultural, and medical histories that illuminate how past discussions of digestion, diet, and body shape have informed modern gender ideals, health, selfhood, and personal values. We learn here how the exterior form of the belly has come to reflect not only what goes into and out of it, but has also become a reliable sign of our inner nature. By adding corpulence and character to the ancient connection between health and dietetics, these essays literally tap into the guts of our contemporary obsession with eating and body image." - Robert A. Nye, Oregon State University
"This is a stimulating excursion through the human alimentary tract that explores the complex intertwinings of Western attitudes toward eating and eliminating with the anxieties generated by the growth of urban, industrial civilization. The ideology of the abdomen is shown to have stimulated and responded to contemporary notions of health, character, and intellect, and to have sown confusion over gender identification and sexual appetite. Physiology and medicine, philosophy and literature, even the world of commerce, are probed to illuminate the preoccupation of the past three centuries with the appearance and experience of the belly." - James Whorton, Professor of Medical History, University of Washington
"If 'food' is the new 'sex' in cultural studies, then this cultural history should be consumed as soon as possible. Linking diet, the body, and the self in deeply and carefully historicized ways, it spans the modern period from the Enlightenment to the present, from 'weight loss in the age of reason' to 'fat is a feminist issue.' It draws together key younger and established scholars for whom culture, history, and the abdomen yield intriguing and important insights into modern sensibilities." - Alison Bashford, The University of Sydney
Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
ANA CARDEN-COYLE is a Lecturer in the Centre for the Cultural History of War at the University of Manchester, UK.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Cultures of the Abdomen
Book Subtitle: Diet, Digestion, and Fat in the Modern World
Editors: Christopher E. Forth, Ana Carden-Coyne
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403981387
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan New York
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies Collection, Social Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: Christopher E. Forth and Ana Carden-Coyne 2005
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4039-6521-9Published: 06 January 2005
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-349-52880-6Published: 06 January 2005
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4039-8138-7Published: 14 January 2005
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: IX, 264
Number of Illustrations: 2 b/w illustrations
Topics: Gender Studies, Social History, Cultural History, Cultural Studies, Popular Science in Medicine and Health