Faith and the Pursuit of Health

Jessica Hardin is an assistant professor of anthropology at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon. She is the co-editor of Reconstructing Obesity: The Meaning of Measures and the Measure of Meanings.

"Hardin’s gripping ethnography of food and faith offers a beautifully-composed analysis of the lived experience of obesity in a Pacific Island community. By connecting religious and metabolic conversions, Hardin shows us how health in Samoa becomes a 'matter of faith' as faith, in turn, comes to physically matter. The stories of how people grapple with cardio-metabolism in this moving account of living and dying in 21st century Samoa will work their way into your heart and stay there." - Emily Yates-Doerr (author of The Weight of Obesity: Hunger and Global Health in Postwar Guatemala) “This superb ethnography of Samoa represents a landmark integration of medical anthropology and the anthropology of Christianity. In the light of Hardin’s original analysis, established topics in both fields having to do with individualism, the body and social relations, and with temporality and cultural change, appear in a strikingly new light. This book is a major contribution that deserves a wide readership.” - Joel Robbins (author of Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society) "This illuminating ethnography provides compelling evidence of Pentecostal Christianity’s appeal for women. A powerful synthesis of medical anthropology and the anthropology of Christianity, the analysis is written in a style that combines the subtleties of them both. The chapter on research methods is a gift to health practitioners and anthropologists undertaking their own studies." - Shirley Lindenbaum (co-editor of Knowledge, Power and Practice: The Anthropology of Medicine and Everyday Life) "Hardin’s ethnography advances anthropology’s significant contribution to our understanding of the spirit, body and soul in health and illness, in a setting characterised by cardiometabolic ambivalence." (The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology)

• Table of ContentsGlossaryNote on PronunciationMapForewordChapter 1: Salvation and MetabolismChapter 2: Ethnography between Clinic and ChurchChapter 3: Discerning Ambiguous RisksChapter 4: Freedom and Health ResponsibilityChapter 5: Embodied AnalyticsChapter 6: Well-being and Deferred AgencyChapter 7: Support SynergiesChapter 8: Integrating Faith into Healthcare PracticeAcknowledgementsEndnotesBibliographyIndex