Trainer
Biographic Data
| ID | 26758 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Trainer |
| FAMILY NAME | Trainer |
| SIGNATURE | TRAINER |
| AFFILIATIONS | Arizona State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4409-4777 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 74 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Who is a responsible woman? Understanding the scope and characteristics of responsible womanhood amongst women in Karachi
In this paper, we will construct and analyze intersecting definitions of womanhood among middle‐class women living in Karachi, Pakistan. Women are agents of their lives and are not passive voices. In this paper, we present narratives of women who resist “societal” narratives of womanhood to live a life of their choosing. We found that participants often defined womanhood through a lens very similar to the Victorian womanhood enforced on people of…
Be Proactive, Perform Regular Skin Self‐Exams and Protect Yourself”
We analyze US‐based online skin cancer organization awareness campaigns, with a particular focus on melanoma, to ask how the skin is discursively created. We focus on the ways people are pushed into the role of the biocitizen and impelled to act in specific ways within the current neoliberal health risk culture. Undertaking a discourse analysis of skin cancer education information reveals that skin is constructed as fragile, at risk, and in need …
Buffering in the intra-household allocation of scarce water in urban Dhaka, Bangladesh
Household management of scarce water aligns to buffering theories, with women prioritising family members perceived to be vulnerable. These findings open new spaces to theorise how intra-household strategies of water allocation shape individual risk and safeguard human health, reconceptualise the dominant paradigm of negative experiences around living with water insecurity to encompass notions of care and shared wellbeing, and develop more sophis…
More than Meets the Eye
Most studies on bariatric surgery identify personal factors such as “non-compliance” to lifestyle changes as the cause of weight gain and subsequent inability to lose weight. Prior qualitative studies suggest that weight loss patients have complicated relationships with both self and weight, with significant emotional and psychological implications. But how do patients themselves understand the trajectories of their weight gain as related to intr…
Managing menstruation with dignity
An emerging body of literature examines multiple connections between water insecurity and mental health, with particular focus on women's vulnerabilities. Women can display greatly elevated emotional distress with increased household water insecurity, because it's them who are primarily responsible for managing household water and uniquely interact with wider water environments. Here we test an extension of this proposition, identifying how notio…
The Harm Inflicted by Polite Concern
Fat Is All My Fault
Norms valorizing not-fat bodies appear to have spread around the world, combined with a globalizing belief that thinness is the result of individual management of self and hard work. We examine themes of blame and felt responsibility for weight and 'fat' in four distinct geographic and cultural locations: peri-urban Georgia, United States; suburban Osaka, Japan; urban Encarnación, Paraguay; and urban Apia, Samoa. Use of a novel metatheme approach…
Metatheme Analysis
In recent years, there has been a florescence of cross-cultural research using ethnographic and qualitative data. This cutting-edge work confronts a range of significant methodological challenges, but has not yet addressed how thematic analysis can be modified for use in cross-cultural ethnography. Thematic analysis is widely used in qualitative and mixed-methods research, yet is not currently well-adapted to cross-cultural ethnographic designs. …
Worry-Nostalgia
Worry-nostalgia is a particular iteration of felt anxiety that certain material things and ways of being in the world are slipping away. We suggest that this particular shade of place-based nostalgia, expressed through stress, anxiety, and worry, comes from broader concerns about individual and community health, weight, and well-being, as well as from longing for the relations that made certain foods seem naturally embedded in a particular commun…
Moral Biocitizenship
In the U.S. large bodies are associated with disorder and lack of control. Reclaiming control can take various forms. Drawing on interviews with eight men who have undergone bariatric surgery, we analyze the specific ways in which they discursively retake control of food, their eating habits, and ultimately their bodies. They accomplish this in two ways: 1) by both (re)categorizing food and transforming the way they consume food, the men linguist…
Shame, Blame, and Status Incongruity
Blogs as Elusive Ethnographic Texts
Burgeoning online environments offer completely new opportunities for ethnographic and other forms of qualitative research. Yet there are no clear standards for how we study online texts from an ethnographic perspective. In this article, we identify barriers to the application of traditional qualitative methods online, using the example of a systematic thematic analysis of weight-loss blogs. These barriers include the influence of the technology …
Piety, Glamour, and Protest
This article focuses on the fashion choices and performances that female Emirati students attending public university in the UAE create across different social and physical spaces, as well as the ways in which these feed into dynamic and fluid presentations of self. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which these self-presentations are constructed in relation to on-campus social interactions, as well as the novelty of many of these intera…
Publically Misfitting
Living with extreme weight in the United States is associated with discrimination and self-stigma, creating structural exclusions, embodied stress, and undermining health and wellbeing. Here we combine ethnographic interviews and surveys from those with experiences of living with extreme weight to better explain how this vulnerability is created and reinforced by public cues, both physical (e.g., seatbelts) and social (the reactions of strangers)…
Not 'Taking the Easy Way Out
Cultural notions equating greater morality and virtue with hard work and productive output are deeply embedded in American value systems. This is exemplified in how people understand and execute personal body projects, including efforts to become slim. Bariatric surgery is commonly viewed as a 'low-effort' means of losing weight, and individuals who opt for this surgery are often perceived to be 'cheating.' This extended ethnographic study within…
Eating in the Panopticon
In this article, we explore the processes by which surveillance of eating and weight is coupled with popular and medical ideas about discipline, responsibility, and moral worth for individuals identified as fat/obese. We then follow these individuals through bariatric surgery and weight loss, paying attention to what discourses and practices shift and what remain unchanged. We argue that weight loss does not temper the intensity and constancy of …
The Fat Self in Virtual Communities
Weight and weight loss are major cultural preoccupations in the United States today, and stigma stemming from being socially categorized as fat appears to be steadily worsening. Online spaces and, more specifically, blogs (weblogs) provide a potentially safe and empowering space in which people struggling with weight issues can create new, virtual selves. We report on cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis of the narratives of 234 US-based wei…
Translating obesity
OBJECTIVES: Obesity is treated within medicine, public health, and applied sciences as a biomedical fact with urgent health implications; obesity is also, however, a social fact and one that reveals biomedical concerns can lead to social suffering. Translation of social science-oriented obesity research for broader public good requires navigation of the space between these polemical and seemingly mutually exclusive positions. METHODS: Using examp…
Obese, Fat, or "Just Big"? Young Adult Deployment of and Reactions to Weight Terms
This study expands understanding of how university students use and react to fat-related terms. The study was conducted in three phases: (1) a tool development phase, (2) a survey phase, and (3) an in-depth interview phase. We highlight a few marked trends in attitude towards and use of certain terms and words indicating larger body size, as well as the implications of these trends. Tellingly, some words are considered more negative than others. …
Towards a Different Middle East
Negotiating weight and body image in the UAE
OBJECTIVES: The goal of this study was to evaluate weight, nutritional status, and attitudes toward weight and health among a cohort of young women drawn from local populations in the United Arab Emirates. METHODS: This sample was composed of 103 female Emiratis, aged 18-30. Eighty of the women were students at Zayed University (ZU) in Dubai and 23 were students at UAE University (UAEU) in Al Ain. Research was divided into two phases. Methods inc…
Environmental Anthropology, Applied Anthropology, Medical Anthropology
Publically Misfitting
Living with extreme weight in the United States is associated with discrimination and self-stigma, creating structural exclusions, embodied stress, and undermining health and wellbeing. Here we combine ethnographic interviews and surveys from those with experiences of living with extreme weight to better explain how this vulnerability is created and reinforced by public cues, both physical (e.g., seatbelts) and social (the reactions of strangers)…
Eating in the Panopticon
In this article, we explore the processes by which surveillance of eating and weight is coupled with popular and medical ideas about discipline, responsibility, and moral worth for individuals identified as fat/obese. We then follow these individuals through bariatric surgery and weight loss, paying attention to what discourses and practices shift and what remain unchanged. We argue that weight loss does not temper the intensity and constancy of …
Blogs as Elusive Ethnographic Texts
Burgeoning online environments offer completely new opportunities for ethnographic and other forms of qualitative research. Yet there are no clear standards for how we study online texts from an ethnographic perspective. In this article, we identify barriers to the application of traditional qualitative methods online, using the example of a systematic thematic analysis of weight-loss blogs. These barriers include the influence of the technology …
Metatheme Analysis
In recent years, there has been a florescence of cross-cultural research using ethnographic and qualitative data. This cutting-edge work confronts a range of significant methodological challenges, but has not yet addressed how thematic analysis can be modified for use in cross-cultural ethnography. Thematic analysis is widely used in qualitative and mixed-methods research, yet is not currently well-adapted to cross-cultural ethnographic designs. …
The Fat Self in Virtual Communities
Weight and weight loss are major cultural preoccupations in the United States today, and stigma stemming from being socially categorized as fat appears to be steadily worsening. Online spaces and, more specifically, blogs (weblogs) provide a potentially safe and empowering space in which people struggling with weight issues can create new, virtual selves. We report on cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis of the narratives of 234 US-based wei…
Not 'Taking the Easy Way Out
Cultural notions equating greater morality and virtue with hard work and productive output are deeply embedded in American value systems. This is exemplified in how people understand and execute personal body projects, including efforts to become slim. Bariatric surgery is commonly viewed as a 'low-effort' means of losing weight, and individuals who opt for this surgery are often perceived to be 'cheating.' This extended ethnographic study within…
Fat Is All My Fault
Norms valorizing not-fat bodies appear to have spread around the world, combined with a globalizing belief that thinness is the result of individual management of self and hard work. We examine themes of blame and felt responsibility for weight and 'fat' in four distinct geographic and cultural locations: peri-urban Georgia, United States; suburban Osaka, Japan; urban Encarnación, Paraguay; and urban Apia, Samoa. Use of a novel metatheme approach…
Moral Biocitizenship
In the U.S. large bodies are associated with disorder and lack of control. Reclaiming control can take various forms. Drawing on interviews with eight men who have undergone bariatric surgery, we analyze the specific ways in which they discursively retake control of food, their eating habits, and ultimately their bodies. They accomplish this in two ways: 1) by both (re)categorizing food and transforming the way they consume food, the men linguist…
Buffering in the intra-household allocation of scarce water in urban Dhaka, Bangladesh
Household management of scarce water aligns to buffering theories, with women prioritising family members perceived to be vulnerable. These findings open new spaces to theorise how intra-household strategies of water allocation shape individual risk and safeguard human health, reconceptualise the dominant paradigm of negative experiences around living with water insecurity to encompass notions of care and shared wellbeing, and develop more sophis…
Piety, Glamour, and Protest
This article focuses on the fashion choices and performances that female Emirati students attending public university in the UAE create across different social and physical spaces, as well as the ways in which these feed into dynamic and fluid presentations of self. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which these self-presentations are constructed in relation to on-campus social interactions, as well as the novelty of many of these intera…
Environmental Anthropology, Applied Anthropology, Medical Anthropology
Negotiating weight and body image in the UAE
OBJECTIVES: The goal of this study was to evaluate weight, nutritional status, and attitudes toward weight and health among a cohort of young women drawn from local populations in the United Arab Emirates. METHODS: This sample was composed of 103 female Emiratis, aged 18-30. Eighty of the women were students at Zayed University (ZU) in Dubai and 23 were students at UAE University (UAEU) in Al Ain. Research was divided into two phases. Methods inc…
Towards a Different Middle East
Translating obesity
OBJECTIVES: Obesity is treated within medicine, public health, and applied sciences as a biomedical fact with urgent health implications; obesity is also, however, a social fact and one that reveals biomedical concerns can lead to social suffering. Translation of social science-oriented obesity research for broader public good requires navigation of the space between these polemical and seemingly mutually exclusive positions. METHODS: Using examp…
Obese, Fat, or "Just Big"? Young Adult Deployment of and Reactions to Weight Terms
This study expands understanding of how university students use and react to fat-related terms. The study was conducted in three phases: (1) a tool development phase, (2) a survey phase, and (3) an in-depth interview phase. We highlight a few marked trends in attitude towards and use of certain terms and words indicating larger body size, as well as the implications of these trends. Tellingly, some words are considered more negative than others. …
The Fat Self in Virtual Communities
Weight and weight loss are major cultural preoccupations in the United States today, and stigma stemming from being socially categorized as fat appears to be steadily worsening. Online spaces and, more specifically, blogs (weblogs) provide a potentially safe and empowering space in which people struggling with weight issues can create new, virtual selves. We report on cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis of the narratives of 234 US-based wei…
Shame, Blame, and Status Incongruity
Blogs as Elusive Ethnographic Texts
Burgeoning online environments offer completely new opportunities for ethnographic and other forms of qualitative research. Yet there are no clear standards for how we study online texts from an ethnographic perspective. In this article, we identify barriers to the application of traditional qualitative methods online, using the example of a systematic thematic analysis of weight-loss blogs. These barriers include the influence of the technology …
Piety, Glamour, and Protest
This article focuses on the fashion choices and performances that female Emirati students attending public university in the UAE create across different social and physical spaces, as well as the ways in which these feed into dynamic and fluid presentations of self. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which these self-presentations are constructed in relation to on-campus social interactions, as well as the novelty of many of these intera…
Publically Misfitting
Living with extreme weight in the United States is associated with discrimination and self-stigma, creating structural exclusions, embodied stress, and undermining health and wellbeing. Here we combine ethnographic interviews and surveys from those with experiences of living with extreme weight to better explain how this vulnerability is created and reinforced by public cues, both physical (e.g., seatbelts) and social (the reactions of strangers)…
Not 'Taking the Easy Way Out
Cultural notions equating greater morality and virtue with hard work and productive output are deeply embedded in American value systems. This is exemplified in how people understand and execute personal body projects, including efforts to become slim. Bariatric surgery is commonly viewed as a 'low-effort' means of losing weight, and individuals who opt for this surgery are often perceived to be 'cheating.' This extended ethnographic study within…
Eating in the Panopticon
In this article, we explore the processes by which surveillance of eating and weight is coupled with popular and medical ideas about discipline, responsibility, and moral worth for individuals identified as fat/obese. We then follow these individuals through bariatric surgery and weight loss, paying attention to what discourses and practices shift and what remain unchanged. We argue that weight loss does not temper the intensity and constancy of …
Moral Biocitizenship
In the U.S. large bodies are associated with disorder and lack of control. Reclaiming control can take various forms. Drawing on interviews with eight men who have undergone bariatric surgery, we analyze the specific ways in which they discursively retake control of food, their eating habits, and ultimately their bodies. They accomplish this in two ways: 1) by both (re)categorizing food and transforming the way they consume food, the men linguist…
Worry-Nostalgia
Worry-nostalgia is a particular iteration of felt anxiety that certain material things and ways of being in the world are slipping away. We suggest that this particular shade of place-based nostalgia, expressed through stress, anxiety, and worry, comes from broader concerns about individual and community health, weight, and well-being, as well as from longing for the relations that made certain foods seem naturally embedded in a particular commun…
Metatheme Analysis
In recent years, there has been a florescence of cross-cultural research using ethnographic and qualitative data. This cutting-edge work confronts a range of significant methodological challenges, but has not yet addressed how thematic analysis can be modified for use in cross-cultural ethnography. Thematic analysis is widely used in qualitative and mixed-methods research, yet is not currently well-adapted to cross-cultural ethnographic designs. …
The Harm Inflicted by Polite Concern
Fat Is All My Fault
Norms valorizing not-fat bodies appear to have spread around the world, combined with a globalizing belief that thinness is the result of individual management of self and hard work. We examine themes of blame and felt responsibility for weight and 'fat' in four distinct geographic and cultural locations: peri-urban Georgia, United States; suburban Osaka, Japan; urban Encarnación, Paraguay; and urban Apia, Samoa. Use of a novel metatheme approach…
More than Meets the Eye
Most studies on bariatric surgery identify personal factors such as “non-compliance” to lifestyle changes as the cause of weight gain and subsequent inability to lose weight. Prior qualitative studies suggest that weight loss patients have complicated relationships with both self and weight, with significant emotional and psychological implications. But how do patients themselves understand the trajectories of their weight gain as related to intr…
Managing menstruation with dignity
An emerging body of literature examines multiple connections between water insecurity and mental health, with particular focus on women's vulnerabilities. Women can display greatly elevated emotional distress with increased household water insecurity, because it's them who are primarily responsible for managing household water and uniquely interact with wider water environments. Here we test an extension of this proposition, identifying how notio…
Be Proactive, Perform Regular Skin Self‐Exams and Protect Yourself”
We analyze US‐based online skin cancer organization awareness campaigns, with a particular focus on melanoma, to ask how the skin is discursively created. We focus on the ways people are pushed into the role of the biocitizen and impelled to act in specific ways within the current neoliberal health risk culture. Undertaking a discourse analysis of skin cancer education information reveals that skin is constructed as fragile, at risk, and in need …
Buffering in the intra-household allocation of scarce water in urban Dhaka, Bangladesh
Household management of scarce water aligns to buffering theories, with women prioritising family members perceived to be vulnerable. These findings open new spaces to theorise how intra-household strategies of water allocation shape individual risk and safeguard human health, reconceptualise the dominant paradigm of negative experiences around living with water insecurity to encompass notions of care and shared wellbeing, and develop more sophis…
Who is a responsible woman? Understanding the scope and characteristics of responsible womanhood amongst women in Karachi
In this paper, we will construct and analyze intersecting definitions of womanhood among middle‐class women living in Karachi, Pakistan. Women are agents of their lives and are not passive voices. In this paper, we present narratives of women who resist “societal” narratives of womanhood to live a life of their choosing. We found that participants often defined womanhood through a lens very similar to the Victorian womanhood enforced on people of…
Sociology (16 works) · Obesity and Health Practices (12 works) · Psychology (12 works) · Medicine (11 works) · Social Psychology (9 works) · Obesity (8 works) · Anthropology (7 works) · Art (6 works) · Eating Disorders and Behaviors (6 works) · Social Psychology (6 works)