culture bound

Culture and Eating Disorders: A Singaporean Perspective — Part 1

Jacqueline 2 Comments

Some previous posts on this blog have explored whether eating disorders might (or might not) be considered culture-bound, or in other words specific to or presenting specifically in certain cultures. If you consider eating disorders to be “culture bound,” they would present primarily in Western cultures, with non-Western cultures ‘receiving’ eating disorder pathology through Westernization. In this post, I explore eating disorders in the Singaporean context to continue to unpack the relationship between culture and eating disorders. Singapore is an interesting place in which to look at eating disorders (not just because I live there) because it complicates the idea of “culture-boundedness.”

Studies have been conducted in Asia; primarily in Hong Kong and to a lesser extent Japan. Most notably, Lee (1991) found non-fat-phobic presentations in Hong Kong supported by Ngai, Lee & Lee (2000) (see this post for more on the Ngai study). Singapore is … Continue reading →

Whose Culture is it Anyway? Disentangling Culture and Eating Disorders – Part 3

Andrea 2 Comments

The articles I’ve looked at so far in this series (Becker, in part 1, and Keel and Klump in part 2) give us some insight into the idea that the link between “Western” societies and eating disorders is more complex than a simple matter of media exposure. But, having read these studies, I was still left a bit wanting in terms of unpacking that black box of “culture” that gets tossed around in scholarly and popular literature. What, exactly, are we talking about when we talk culture in eating disorders?

Rebecca Lester, who is quite a prolific social anthropologist and who has written about eating disorder treatment systems in the USA and Mexico, makes the argument that “culture” is too often used as an umbrella term for semi-related but not-entirely-synonymous factors. This makes me wonder: is it possible that in latching on to the media side of Becker’s … Continue reading →

Whose Culture is it Anyway? Disentangling Culture and Eating Disorders – Part 2

Andrea 25 Comments

In this post I’ll continue on the trend of considering the “culture bound” nature of eating disorders by looking at another commonly-cited article about eating disorders and culture. In this article, Keel and Klump (2003) look at the cultural and historical facets of anorexia and bulimia. They looked at whether eating disorders were present in other sociohistorical and cultural contexts in order to determine whether AN and BN are “culture bound.”

Their research, as I alluded to at the end of the first post in this series, suggests that anorexia is not culture bound (i.e., it can occur in the absence of certain aspects of culture), while bulimia is (i.e., it only/primarily appears in certain cultural contexts). As this finding might actually run counter to what popular press would have us believe, looking at this article provides us some interesting insight into how spin can really be everything. … Continue reading →

Whose Culture is it Anyway? Disentangling Culture and Eating Disorders – Part 1

Andrea 8 Comments

Often, in writing about eating disorders, you will come across references to how some consider these disorders to be “culture bound.” If you start to unpack what researchers and clinicians are referring to, you might come to the conclusion that “culture bound” means specific to one particular culture or society, for example, modern Western society.

By extension, you might then think that the more “Western” a culture is, the more likely that there will be eating disorders present. You might have seen this logic reproduced in such works as: “Western Media is the Root of all Evil” (note: title does not refer to an actual study/article… I hope).

The way the popular press has taken up the culture boundedness of eating disorders does not always represent the way that it is described in research articles (I know, you’re shocked–not). Generally, and quite predictably, the “culture bound” nature of eating disorders is … Continue reading →