Lester Rebecca J
Department of Anthropology, Washington University, USA.
Med Anthropol Q. 2007 Dec;21(4):369-87. doi: 10.1525/maq.2007.21.4.369.
Recent studies suggest that eating disorders are increasing in Mexico and that this seems to correspond with Mexico's push to modernization. In this respect, Mexico exemplifies the acculturation hypothesis of eating disorders, namely, that anorexia and bulimia are culture-bound syndromes tied to postindustrial capitalist development and neoliberalist values, and that their appearance elsewhere is indicative of acculturation to those values. Available evidence for this claim, however, is often problematic. On the basis of five years of comparative fieldwork in eating disorder clinics in Mexico City and a small Midwestern city in the United States, I reframe this as an ethnographic question by examining how specific clinical practices at each site entangle global diagnostic categories with local social realities in ways that problematize existing epistemologies about culture and illness. In this regard, debates about acculturation and the global rise of eating disorders foreground issues of central epistemological and practical importance to contemporary medical anthropology more generally.
近期研究表明，饮食失调症在墨西哥呈上升趋势，且这似乎与墨西哥的现代化进程相关。在这方面，墨西哥例证了饮食失调症的文化适应假说，即厌食症和贪食症是与后工业资本主义发展及新自由主义价值观相关的文化束缚综合征，它们在其他地方出现表明对这些价值观的文化适应。然而，支持这一说法的现有证据往往存在问题。基于在墨西哥城和美国中西部一个小城市的饮食失调症诊所进行的五年比较实地调查，我通过研究每个地点的特定临床实践如何以使现有关于文化和疾病的认识论产生问题的方式将全球诊断类别与当地社会现实交织在一起，将此重新表述为一个民族志问题。在这方面，关于文化适应和饮食失调症全球增多的辩论更普遍地凸显了对当代医学人类学具有核心认识论和实践重要性的问题。
