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Psychopathology and personal agency: Modernity, culture change and eating disorders in South Asian societies
Author(s) -
Littlewood Roland
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
british journal of medical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.102
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 2044-8341
pISSN - 0007-1129
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8341.1995.tb01812.x
Subject(s) - biosocial theory , psychology , modernity , psychopathology , agency (philosophy) , modernization theory , eating disorders , social psychology , culture change , appropriation , developmental psychology , gender studies , sociology , psychiatry , social science , personality , political science , epistemology , philosophy , law
The cultural contribution to psychopathology may become more salient in situations of social change, but it remains difficult to distinguish individual agency among wider social and economic transitions, such as ‘modernization’ or simply ‘culture change’, which carry the potential for recourse to new patterns. Eating disorders, a biosocial pattern once identified exclusively with European societies, do occur among South Asian women including those living in the West. This seems not just a simple appropriation of contemporary Western ideals of female morphology — the ‘fear of fatness’ — but a reassertion of an instrumental strategy of self‐renunciation in situations of experienced constraint.