Domestic Temporalities: Sensual Patterning in Persian Migratory Landscapes

When dealing with the moving worlds of migration among the Persian diaspora in Australia, memories cannot simply be removed to dusty attic boxes to be stored as an archive. Rather, this analysis takes the body and its sensory engagement with the world as a central focus, arguing that memories are crafted, tasted, smelt and touched in everyday temporalities. In the kitchens and lounges of Persian migrant women the lived past refuses to become undone from the countless revolutions of food, talk and domestic activity that are central to the patterning of memory. In this paper, we argue that these intimate practices have references beyond their domestic dimensions, for they point to a worldly movement of life writ domestically small. It is via a sensory network that the spatially and temporally disparate worlds of homeland and new homes are remembered and forgotten, and where miniature worlds call out to the movement of migration. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, Volume 7, Edition 2 September 200

‘Healthy anorexia’: The complexity of care in disordered eating

Author version made available in accordance with the publisher's policy. An embargo period of 36 months from date of publication will apply. © 2015. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Objective: To develop a psychotherapy rating scale to measure therapist adherence in the Strong Without Anorexia Nervosa (SWAN) study; a multi-centre randomised controlled trial comparing three different psychological treatments for adults with Anorexia Nervosa. The three treatments under investigation were Enhanced Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT-E), the Maudsley Anorexia Nervosa Treatment for Adults (MANTRA) and Specialist Supportive Clinical Management (SSCM). Method: The SWAN Psychotherapy Rating Scale (SWAN-PRS) was developed, after consultation with the developers of the treatments, and refined. Using the SWAN-PRS, two independent raters initially rated 48 audiotapes of treatment sessions to yield inter-rater reliability data. One rater proceeded to rate a total of 98 audiotapes from 64 trial participants. Results: The SWAN-PRS demonstrated sound psychometric properties, and was considered a reliable measure of therapist adherence. The three treatments were highly distinguishable by independent raters, with therapists demonstrating significantly more behaviours consistent with the actual allocated treatment compared to the other two treatment modalities. There were no significant site differences in therapist adherence observed. Discussion: The findings provide support for the internal validity of the SWAN study. The SWAN-PRS was deemed suitable for use in other trials involving CBT-E, MANTRA or SSCM

Socio-economic divergence in public opinions about preventive obesity regulations: Is the purpose to ‘make some things cheaper, more affordable’ or to ‘help them get over their own ignorance’?

This research is focused on the study of the assessment of the availability of interconnection of Sub Remote node Junín to the main node CORPAC Lima using a VSAT station. The work was performed for the communications area of the Peruvian Corporation of Airports and Commercial Aviation SA CORPAC located in the city of Lima, Callao. In the first chapter, we can see the current problems of the interconnection of Sub Node CORPAC Junín with the main node CORPAC Lima presenting in the second chapter a theoretical framework about the current link DIGIRED as well as VSTA stations and solutions integration with satellite link. In the third chapter, the materials, procedures, calculations and analysis methods used in this thesis are presented, so that in the fourth chapter, document the link design. Finally in the fifth chapter, the results will be analyzed and then the conclusions and recommendations obtained will be presented.La presente investigación se centra en el estudio de la evaluación de la disponibilidad de interconexión del Sub Nodo remoto Junín al Nodo principal CORPAC Lima usando una estación VSAT. El trabajo fue realizado para el área de comunicaciones de la Corporación Peruana de Aeropuertos y Aviación Comercial CORPAC S.A. ubicada en la ciudad de Lima, Provincia Constitucional del Callao. En el primer capítulo se aborda la problemática actual de la interconexión del Sub Nodo CORPAC Junín con el Nodo principal CORPAC Lima presentando en el segundo capítulo un marco teórico referencial acerca del enlace actual DIGIRED así como de las estaciones VSAT y su integración con soluciones de enlace satelital. En el tercer capítulo, se presentan los materiales, procedimientos, cálculos y métodos de análisis empleados en la presente tesis, para luego en el cuarto capítulo, documentar el diseño del enlace. Finalmente en el quinto capítulo, se analizarán los resultados y a continuación se presentarán las conclusiones y recomendaciones obtenidas

Sober Curiosity: A Qualitative Study Exploring Women’s Preparedness to Reduce Alcohol by Social Class

Background: Urgent action is required to identify socially acceptable alcohol reduction options for heavy-drinking midlife Australian women. This study represents innovation in public health research to explore how current trends in popular wellness culture toward ‘sober curiosity’ (i.e., an interest in what reducing alcohol consumption would or could be like) and normalising non-drinking could increase women’s preparedness to reduce alcohol consumption. Methods: Qualitative interviews were undertaken with 27 midlife Australian women (aged 45–64) living in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney in different social class groups (working, middle and affluent-class) to explore their perceptions of sober curiosity. Results: Women were unequally distributed across social-classes and accordingly the social-class analysis considered proportionally the volume of data at particular codes. Regardless, social-class patterns in women’s preparedness to reduce alcohol consumption were generated through data analysis. Affluent women’s preparedness to reduce alcohol consumption stemmed from a desire for self-regulation and to retain control; middle-class women’s preparedness to reduce alcohol was part of performing civility and respectability and working-class women’s preparedness to reduce alcohol was highly challenging. Options are provided for alcohol reduction targeting the social contexts of consumption (the things that lead midlife women to feel prepared to reduce drinking) according to levels of disadvantage. Conclusion: Our findings reinstate the importance of recognising social class in public health disease prevention; validating that socially determined factors which shape daily living also shape health outcomes and this results in inequities for women in the lowest class positions to reduce alcohol and related risks

Examining social class as it relates to heuristics women use to determine the trustworthiness of information regarding the link between alcohol and breast cancer risk

Background: High rates of alcohol consumption by midlife women, despite the documented risks associated with breast cancer, varies according to social class. However, we know little about how to develop equitable messaging regarding breast cancer prevention that takes into consideration class differences in the receipt and use of such information. Objective: To explore the heuristics used by women with different (inequitable) life chances to determine the trustworthiness of information regarding alcohol as a modifiable risk factor for breast cancer risk. Methods and materials: Interviews were conducted with 50 midlife (aged 45–64) women living in South Australia, diversified by self-reported alcohol consumption and social class. Women were asked to describe where they sought health information, how they accessed information specific to breast cancer risk as it relates to alcohol, and how they determined whether (or not) such information was trustworthy. De-identified transcripts were analysed following a three-step progressive method with the aim of identifying how women of varying life chances determine the trustworthiness of alcohol and breast cancer risk information. Three heuristics were used by women: (1) consideration of whose interests are being served; (2) engagement with ‘common sense’; and (3) evaluating the credibility of the message and messenger. Embedded within each heuristic are notable class-based distinctions. Conclusions: More equitable provision of cancer prevention messaging might consider how social class shapes the reception and acceptance of risk information. Class should be considered in the development and tailoring of messages as the trustworthiness of organizations behind public health messaging cannot be assumed

Miasmatic Calories and Saturating Fats: Fear of Contamination in Anorexia

This paper draws on ethnographic material to challenge the taken-for-granted relationship between anorexia and fear of fat. While popular understandings assume anorexia to be an extension of everyday dietary guidelines and a fear of weight gain from foods high in fats and calories, I argue that it is fear of contamination rather than fear of fat per se that is at issue. Through a critique and extension of Mary Douglas' structuralist typology and Julia Kristeva's embodied theory of abjection, I demonstrate that it is the qualities of certain foods, and in particular their amorphous natures, that render them contaminating. Saturating fats and invisible calories are considered dangerous by people with anorexia because they have the ability to move, seep, and infiltrate the body through the interplay of senses. Foods that transgress conceptual and bodily boundaries are thus to be avoided at all costs, for they have the potential to defile and pollute. In light of the low recovery rates for those with anorexia within Australia (and internationally), the findings of this paper have significant implications for the understanding and treatment of this disorder

Transformations of Intimacy and Sociality in Anorexia: Bedrooms in Public Institutions

Anorexia can be characterized as a profound transformation in social relations. These transformations occur across a number of overlapping fields, and include a range of institutional and domestic spaces and myriad mundane bodily practices in each. Through an examination of household space and a conventional treatment programme this article demonstrates the ways in which people with anorexia use and transform space. While there are many treatment programmes available for those with a diagnosis of anorexia, the ethnographic focus here is on those who have undergone bed programmes in public hospitals. As a result of the particularities of time and space, these rooms are transformed into intimate spaces that represent domestic bedrooms, thus fundamentally changing the nature of shared space in institutionalized settings. These transformations, however, are not straightforward, for these bedrooms fuse a number of bodily practices (such as eating, sleeping and abluting) that are sharply demarcated in domestic architecture. In these hospital bedrooms, private and public space is conflated, reversed and made ambiguous. Moreover, this article argues that this institutional transformation of space reproduces many of the private practices associated with anorexia, a factor which has been overlooked in the recorded failure of these types of programmes

Reconfiguring Relatedness in Anorexia

Anthropological concepts of relatedness have not been addressed in any of the writings on anorexia, despite the literature being replete with negative connotations of sociality such as withdrawal, regression, and toxic families (in the form of 'obsessive mothers' or 'absent fathers'). As a departure to the vast literature on this topic, this multi-sited ethnographic project draws on the recent critiques and broadening of the concept of kinship to examine the ways in which a group of people with a diagnosis of anorexia understood and experienced relatedness in their everyday lives, that is, how they continually transformed connections by truncating, creating, sustaining and abandoning them. Those practices that are taken for granted as creating and sustaining relatedness - from the everyday practices of commensality to the capacity to have children - were consistently negated. Negating consensual avenues of relatedness did not leave these people in a void. On the contrary, new and productive meanings and experiences of being related were created and people entered into a relationship with anorexia that, in turn, tempered their relationships with their everyday worlds. In examining the 'relational matrix' of anorexia, new spaces of agency, ambiguity and power are illuminated