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The Uses Of Expertise: Science, Medicine And Body/Self-Fashioning, Amanda J. Counts

Master's Theses

This paper draws on empirical evidence collected from pro-anorexia websites and qualitative interviews with dieters to develop an analysis of the uses of medical and scientific expertise in processes of body- and self-fashioning. It builds on previous work by examining how `lay publics' refashion expertise in order to use it for new purposes, sometimes contradictory to the purposes of medicine itself. Four distinct groups are analyzed: Women diagnosed with anorexia; women diagnosed with EDNOS (Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified); dieters using traditional methods of caloric restricting; and dieters using a new method called Primal Dieting. Overall, respondents indicated an ambivalence …