%0 Journal Article
%T Uma vis£¿o antropol¨®gica do prodigioso jejum de mulheres ocidentais
%A Counihan
%A Carole M.
%J Cadernos Pagu
%D 2012
%I N¨²cleo de Estudos de G¨ºnero - Pagu
%R 10.1590/S0104-83332012000200002
%X in prodigious fasting, sometimes to death, western women have expressed an extraordinary relationship to food for almost eight centuries. this essay attempts to explain such behavior by weaving together the fine-grained and fascinating historical data presented in the three books under review - holy anorexia (bell, 1985); fasting girls: the emergence of anorexia nervosa as a modern disease (brumberg, 1988) e holy feast and holy fast: the religious significance of food to medieval women (bynum, 1987) - and viewing them from the cross-cultural and holistic perspectives fundamental to anthropology. i aim to show that western female fasting differs radically from other kinds of fasting observed by anthropologists across the globe and that it involves a highly symbolic alteration of women's universal relationship to food. i argue that it is best understood as a multidetermined behavior, an interplay of ideological, economic, political, and social factors.
%K fasting
%K anthropology
%K women
%K food.
%U http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_abstract&pid=S0104-83332012000200002&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en