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The conflicting notions and experiences of eating disorders from patients, family carers and professionals must be reconciled when treating these conditions. This book is an in-depth ethnographic account of the practices and ethics of care which are attempted by clinicians in a public treatment centre in Italy. Food and family emerge aligned in both the production and treatment of eating disorders, as healthcare professionals tackle the kinship relationships of patients in order to intervene in their eating behaviour and its impact on their bodies. Ultimately, the book rethinks existing understandings of the relationship between food and kinship, showing how kinship makes and unmakes people through food.
Giulia Sciolli is Researcher at the Interdepartmental Center for Research Ethics and Integrity of the National Research Council of Italy, and Affiliated Researcher in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. In Italy, she has edited an interdisciplinary volume on the relationship between care and coercion in eating disorder treatment entitled Cure che Costringono, Costrizioni che Curano (CNR Edizioni, 2024).
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1. Into the Field
Chapter 2. If Food Is the Symptom, What Is the Problem?
Chapter 3. From Coercion to Responsibility: Transforming Bodies, Transforming Minds, Transforming Selves
Chapter 4. ‘We are a relational laboratory’: Kinship as a Therapeutic Tool
Chapter 5. Treating Patients ‘who don’t speak’: The Challenge of Treating Children
Chapter 6. When ‘things don’t work’: Chronicity, Comorbidity and the Limits of Care
Conclusion: The Social that Hurts
References
Index