Containment, control and surveillance: a qualitative inquiry into eating disorders and the COVID-19 pandemic

Feather, E. (2024) Containment, control and surveillance: a qualitative inquiry into eating disorders and the COVID-19 pandemic. Social and Cultural Geography, (doi: 10.1080/14649365.2024.2327286) (Early Online Publication)

Abstract

This paper works towards a social geography of eating disorders through the lens of the coronavirus pandemic in the UK. Through an empirical engagement with experience-centred knowledge, I couple nine in-depth interviews with autoethnographic material, drawing out the spatial (real and virtual) and temporal (habit, routine, anticipation, non-linearity) dimensions of eating disorder experience, management and recovery; highlighting principally how pandemic lockdown conditions intensified space-time, mind/body and social relations across various micro-domestic and macro-governmental scales. I engage ‘lightly’ with Foucauldian concepts of disciplinary and biopolitical power to draw out broad-brush themes around matters of containment, control and surveillance; taking feminist inspiration to think through Foucault critically as I explore a nexus of gendered pandemic power relations. In doing so, I contribute towards new feminist understandings of the disciplinary gaze, emphasizing the ongoingness of surveillance through both physical body-checking and what I term psychological ‘guising’. Through such (in)voluntary disordered bodily practices, and an engagement with the feminist mind/body dualism, I emphasize the complexity of EDs as embodied mental illnesses, further complicating feminist understandings of control. I close by discussing the ethical-methodological importance of ‘empathy’ while emphasizing the overall imperative of critical qualitative inquiry for socio-cultural geographies and beyond.

• Item Type: Articles
• Additional Information: This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council under Grant [ES/P000681/1].
• Status: Early Online Publication
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Feather, Ellys
• Authors: Feather, E.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering
• Journal Name: Social and Cultural Geography
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• ISSN: 1464-9365
• ISSN (Online): 1470-1197
• Published Online: 12 March 2024
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2024 The Author(s)
• First Published: First published in Social and Cultural Geography 2024
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons license

Project Code	Award No	Project Name	Principal Investigator	Funder's Name	Funder Ref	Lead Dept
303166		Scottish Graduate School Science Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP)	Mary Beth Kneafsey	Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)	ES/P000681/1	SS - Academic & Student Administration