The anorexic body: a feminist and sociological perspective on anorexia nervosa

This thesis attempts a sociological and feminist analysis of anorexia nervosa. Anorexia is an illness which affects predominantly women, and its incidence is greatest among middle-class young women in Western countries. Its strong bias along class and gender lines suggests that such an approach to the illness could prove fruitful. The thesis argues that analysis of anorexia demands a clear understanding of the sociology of the body. The sociology of the body sees the body as constructed in social life: understandings of the body vary temporally and culturally, and reflect the categories of their culture. It is suggested that anorexia nervosa represents an attempted transformation of the concept of the feminine body in contemporary culture. Anorexic women aim to transcend appetite, and to allow no intrusions into the body, constructing an anorexic body which is closed, separate and inviolable. Since this transformation is individuated and privatised, however, it cannot ultimately succeed in overturning a system of social meanings. The thesis concludes that individual solutions to anorexia will not lead to the end of the illness as a social phenomenon in the lives of women. Only collective feminist action can reconstruct the degraded contemporary concept of woman. The argument is pursued firstly through a discussion of the initial use of the term `anorexia nervosa' in the late nineteenth century by Gull and Lasegue. The treatment of anorexia as a modern disease is discussed, and the claim that anorexia has always existed but has not been recognised is refuted. Psychiatric and feminist accounts of anorexia are then considered. The former see anorexia as a purely individual phenomenon, and the limitations of this position are discussed. Feminist analyses of anorexia, in seeing it as deeply intertwined with women's social position in a patriarchal culture, are argued to advance understanding of the illness, while still retaining individualist elements. The next section analyses the ways in which anorexic women themselves explain their illness. This leads on to a discussion of the notion of the body as concept. After a theoretical outline, several body-concepts are analysed and placed in their social and historical contexts. Contemporary understandings of the body as an individuated possession are then discussed, with particular focus on the concept of the feminine body as passive object. Objectification, discipline and chaos are argued to be the central meanings of the feminine body in contemporary culture. Analysis of the issues of abortion and rape seek to make this theoretical point clearer. A detailed analysis of anorexic practices looks at how these meanings are transformed in anorexia. It is suggested that anorexic women try to construct an inviolate anorexic body which is completely under their control through a complexly ritualised eating pattern. The precarious nature of this control points to the limitations of individual `solutions' to social problems

Co-benefits of mitigation options in the CCAFS- Mitigation Options Tool (CCAFS-MOT)

This work is the result of a collaboration among the University of Aberdeen, CCAFS, and the Gund Institute for Environment, University of Vermont. CCAFS, which is carried out with support from the CGIAR Trust Fund and through bilateral funding agreements. For details please visit ttps://ccafs.cgiar.org/donors. The views expressed in this document cannot be taken to reflect the official opinions of these organizations. In addition to support from CCAFS and its donors, research and development of CCAFSMOT has been supported by the British Research Council’s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).Publisher PD

Measuring and modelling towline responses using GPS aided inertial navigation

The offshore towage of large floating structures has been the broad subject of research since the 1960’s. The selection of a tug to engage in a tow is based on rules laid down by class and marine warranty surveyors derived from years of experience but a rigorous assessment of these rules based on a comprehensive real world datasets has not been possible. This is principally due to the nature of these tows, usually employing tugs chartered at short notice from the spot market, the long towline lengths when under tow and the high value of the tow itself. Given the commercial implications in being able to better match a suitable tug to any given tow, this research lays down the requirements of an ideal dataset, i.e. one that has a record of towline tensions, complete 6DOF of both the tug and tow all recorded to a universal timeline, along with the seastate experienced by the tow at any given point. It then reviews the historical restrictions in gathering this data and that the key issue has been gathering the motions of the unpowered tow and recording the towline tensions.A methodology is then developed which requires no interference with the towline and draws upon Kalman filters for optimal state estimation of the tug and tow’s position and attitude in 3D space driving a lumped mass simulation of the towline coded in MatLab. The stiffness properties of key elements of the towline are assessed by FEA and observations made on areas where normal industry practice’s may be lacking. Observations on advances in sensor technology as well as other areas for development are then made that provide fertile areas for further research. Finally the full code base for a MatLab, lumped mass simulator is presented in an appendix for future use.The offshore towage of large floating structures has been the broad subject of research since the 1960’s. The selection of a tug to engage in a tow is based on rules laid down by class and marine warranty surveyors derived from years of experience but a rigorous assessment of these rules based on a comprehensive real world datasets has not been possible. This is principally due to the nature of these tows, usually employing tugs chartered at short notice from the spot market, the long towline lengths when under tow and the high value of the tow itself. Given the commercial implications in being able to better match a suitable tug to any given tow, this research lays down the requirements of an ideal dataset, i.e. one that has a record of towline tensions, complete 6DOF of both the tug and tow all recorded to a universal timeline, along with the seastate experienced by the tow at any given point. It then reviews the historical restrictions in gathering this data and that the key issue has been gathering the motions of the unpowered tow and recording the towline tensions.A methodology is then developed which requires no interference with the towline and draws upon Kalman filters for optimal state estimation of the tug and tow’s position and attitude in 3D space driving a lumped mass simulation of the towline coded in MatLab. The stiffness properties of key elements of the towline are assessed by FEA and observations made on areas where normal industry practice’s may be lacking. Observations on advances in sensor technology as well as other areas for development are then made that provide fertile areas for further research. Finally the full code base for a MatLab, lumped mass simulator is presented in an appendix for future use