The researchers will investigate the social and cultural reasons why anorexia nervosa is difficult to cure through an ethnographic study of "non-compliance" on the part of anorexic patients in the United States. Anorexics often resist treatment, and the purpose of this project is to determine if this resistance is related to the fact that anorexia exaggerates a contemporary ideal of feminine "fitness" and bodily control. Many young women today try to attain autonomy and self-control through dieting and exercise, in the face of pressures to relax and consume. Anorexics carry the dieter's dilemma to an extreme in their experience of a control paradox; the more anorexics are able to control their bodies, the more their bodies seem to control them with demands for food and relaxation. The central hypothesis for this project is that anorexics do not comply with psychiatric protocols because these treatment practices participate in the cultural production of the anorexics' predicament, by recreating her fundamental anxiety about whether or not she can control herself. The doctoral researcher will investigate this problem through interviews with patients and clinicians, case studies of individual anorexics' life histories, and observations of the interaction between anorexics and clinicians in eating disorder clinics. If the researchers' central thesis holds up to evaluation, this project will demonstrate the close relation between clinical practice and cultural constructions of the ideals of feminine control and should aid clinicians in devising better ways in which to treat anorexics.
