Megan B. McCullough is a medical anthropologist whose research specializes in the cultural study of provider behavior change, the context of health care practices, pharmaceutical care, embodiment, and patient-centered experiences of chronic conditions. She is a Research Health Scientist at the Department of Veteran Affairs and a Visiting Scholar at Brandeis University. Jessica A. Hardin is a PhD Candidate at Brandeis University. Her research focuses on how metabolic disorders including diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular diseases are spiritualized in their etiologies by evangelical Christians in independent Samoa. She has lectured at Brandeis University and the National University of Samoa as well as worked as an applied anthropologist at the Institute for Community Health in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

"By situating this collection at the nexus of understanding of knowledge about obesity and obesity itself as contextual, sociocultural, and contested phenomena, the various authors contribute an understanding of obesity as both a local biology and a global assemblage... Highly recommended." - Choice"This is not a book that seeks to discredit health research and leave others to do the work of finding a better way to conduct it; rather, it aims to improve health research by providing useful avenues for critique and suggestions for ways forward. In this sense, it works as a very practical guide for those working in the health professions, whether as researchers or healthcare providers, to better understand "obesity" and "overweight" and, importantly, fat people in social and environmental context... it makes a welcome and necessary intervention into the business of health research, provision, and discourse, as well as its public reception." - Fat Studies Journal"The volume is framed by an excellent Introduction... In all, the various contributions and the volume as a whole successfully de-naturalise and de-universalise obesity so that it is no longer a singular category and the various taken for-granted assumptions about the stigmas attached to it are reconceived." - Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale"Reconstructing Obesity is successful in challenging currently-held notions regarding the measurement and meanings of obesity and fatness. It encourages us to employ critical approaches and interdisciplinary research for advancing obesity research, public health messaging and interventions, and health care practices... an important book for now and in the future." - American Journal of Human Biology"The volume includes contributions from ten authors seeking to problematize the taken-for-granted assumptions underlying popular, media, and professional discourses about obesity. It is a welcome addition to the growing body of medical anthropological research about chronic and non-communicable conditions... The volume makes several novel contributions to the literature, including, among others, integrated analyses of the linkages between obesity and restrictive eating in cultural context... Overall, the book is an excellent reminder that there is more than meets the eye in popular and professional discourses that dominate our thinking about obesity and health." - Medical Anthropology Quarterly"A valuable text. The arguments and chapters are coherently linked to highlight the role of cultural assumptions in medical and social attitudes towards fatness and obesity. The volume makes a strong contribution to contextualizing ideologies on fatness and invites the reader to engage with a diverse range of disciplinary perspectives." - Lucy Aphramor, Well Founded Ltd, Centre for Exercise and Health

• Acknowledgements Dedication Introduction: Re-Constructing Obesity Megan B. McCullough and Jessica A. Hardin Part I: Naturalizing Measures and Universalizing Effects Chapter 1. Resocializing Body Weight, Obesity and Health Agency Anne E. Becker Chapter 2. The Mismeasure of Obesity Emily Yates-Doerr Chapter 3. 'Diabesity' and the stigmatizing of lifestyle in Australia Darlene McNaughton Part II: Cross-Cultural Body Discourses and Unstable Categories Chapter 4. Obesity in Cuba: Memories of the Special Period and Approaches to Weight Loss Today Hanna Garth Chapter 5. Fasting for Health, Fasting for God: Samoan Evangelical Christian Responses to Obesity and Chronic Disease Jessica A. Hardin Part III: Fat Etiologies and Conflicting Interventions Chapter 6. Perspectives on Diabetes and Obesity from an Anthropologist in Behavioral Medicine Rochelle Rosen Chapter 7. Body Image and Weight Concerns among Emirati Women in the United Arab Emirates Sarah Trainer Chapter 8. 'Not Neutral Ground': Exploring School as a Site for Childhood Obesity Intervention and Prevention Programs Tracey Galloway and Tina Moffat Part IV: Cultures of Practice Chapter 9. An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Ton of Controversy: Exploring Tensions in the Fields of Obesity and Eating Disorder Prevention Lisa R. Rubin and Jessica A. Joseph Chapter 10. Fat and Knocked-Up: An Embodied Analysis of Stigma, Visibility, and Invisibility in the Biomedical Management of an Obese Pregnancy Megan B. McCullough Afterword Stephen McGarvey Index