Papers by Else Vogel
Tinkering with Relations
Oxford University Press eBooks, Oct 20, 2022
Experimenting with Ethnography
As ethnographers we continually make differences, relations between a " here" and a " there," a "... more As ethnographers we continually make differences, relations between a " here" and a " there," a "this" and "that. " And as we compare and contrast, we also decide to keep some things stable rather than others. How do we decide which differences matter? In this chapter I discuss an analytic technique for engaging with this question, which I have coined "juxtaposition. " As I will elaborate, this technique was my strategy for dealing with a challenge all anthropologists face: determining how to relate to the dominant stories in our field, and how to avoid strengthening them while still recognizing their power. Strictly speaking, juxtaposition is a literary device whereby one places things close together for the purpose of yielding contrasting effects. In my reworking of it, juxtaposition concerns the pro cess of foregrounding and then contrasting par tic u lar ele ments in a messy and complex field. In my attempt to "reverse engineer" the craft of this technique, I will draw on my research on eating and health as they get problematized in the context of the reported "obesity epidemic" in the Netherlands (Vogel 2016).
Enacting community health: Obesity prevention policies as situated caring
The Sociological Review, 2021
Drawing on Critical Policy Studies and feminist STS, this article conceptualizes obesity preventi... more Drawing on Critical Policy Studies and feminist STS, this article conceptualizes obesity prevention activities as ongoing and precarious practices of relating – rather than as means for ‘getting results’ or vehicles through which normative discourses are instilled. It focuses on ‘community approaches’ within public health, whose aim is to stimulate healthy initiatives from what policy makers term ‘bottom-up’, emerging from the situations, concerns and abilities within neighbourhoods. Drawing on ethnographic research on the ‘Amsterdam Healthy Weight Programme’, I demonstrate that different practices of relating enact particular versions of health and community. I warn that reliance on statistics-based problem definitions, dietary advice and professional hierarchies preconfigures health promotion as a matter of ‘reaching out’ to particular ‘problem populations’ defined around class and ethnicity. I show, however, that community approaches may also foster spaces for ‘situated caring’, ...
BioSocieties, 2018
In this article, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the Netherlands, I explore how weight manag... more In this article, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the Netherlands, I explore how weight management practices adapt scientific knowledge to the pragmatics of daily life. I contrast two 'metabolic logics': one premises calculating food and exercise to ensure energy balance; the other, operating as a critique to the first, puts its hope in activating people's metabolic rate. Metabolic logics, I stress, do not just present ideas on bodily functioning. They are also and importantly a practical and material affair. The first approach incites a desire and sense of responsibility in people to have control over and correct their bodies, while the second, foregrounding less measurable forms of health, hinges on a person's responsivity and trust in other active entities. Metabolic practices do not merely follow scientific insights into how fat comes about; they include estimations of what knowledge is helpful in daily life when overweight is a concern. However, innovation is difficult, as in exercise machines, recommended dietary intakes or diet shakes, figures of food as fuel and bodies as machines stubbornly sediment. In conclusion, I suggest that when 'thinking metabolically' we address metabolism as part of the socio-material practices that narrate eating, bodies and moving together in particular ways.
Health care analysis : HCA : journal of health philosophy and policy, Jan 17, 2014
Public debate about who or what is to blame for the rising rates of obesity and overweight shifts... more Public debate about who or what is to blame for the rising rates of obesity and overweight shifts between two extreme opinions. The first posits overweight as the result of a lack of individual will, the second as the outcome of bodily drives, potentially triggered by the environment. Even though apparently clashing, these positions are in fact two faces of the same liberal coin. When combined, drives figure as a complication on the road to health, while a strong will should be able to counter obesity. Either way, the body's propensity to eat is to be put under control. Drawing on fieldwork in several obesity clinics and prevention sites in the Netherlands, this paper first traces how this 'logic of control' presents itself in clinical practices targeted at overweight people, and then goes on to explore how these practices move beyond that logic. Using the concepts of 'will' and 'drives' as analytical tools, I sketch several modes of ordering reality in w...
Anthropology & medicine, Jan 15, 2017
Drawing on participant observation in a 'mindful weight loss' course offered in the Nethe... more Drawing on participant observation in a 'mindful weight loss' course offered in the Netherlands, this paper explores the normative register through which mindfulness techniques cast people in relation to concerns with overeating and body weight. The women seeking out mindfulness use eating to cope with troubles in their lives and are hindered by a preoccupation with the size of their bodies. Mindfulness coaches aim to help them let go of this 'struggle with eating' by posing as the central question: 'what do I really hunger after?' The self's hungers include 'belly hunger' but also stem from mouths, hearts, heads, noses and eyes. They cannot all be fed by food. The techniques detailed in this paper focus on recognizing and disentangling one's hungers; developing self-knowledge of and a sensitivity to what 'feeds' one's life; and the way one positions oneself in relation to oneself and the world. While introducing new norms, the cou...
Sociology of health & illness, Jan 12, 2017
In this article, I describe the processes through which patients diagnosed with 'morbid obesi... more In this article, I describe the processes through which patients diagnosed with 'morbid obesity' become active subjects through undergoing obesity surgery and an empowerment lifestyle programme in a Dutch obesity clinic. Following work in actor-network theory and material semiotics that complicates the distinction between active and passive subjects, I trace how agency is configured and re-distributed throughout the treatment trajectory. In the clinic's elaborate care assemblage - consisting of dieticians, exercise coaches and psychologists - the person is not only actively involved in his/her own change, the subject of intervention is the self as 'actor': his/her material constitution, inclinations and feelings. The empirical examples reveal that a self becomes capable of self-care only after a costly and laborious conditioning through which patients are completely transformed. In this work, the changed body, implying a new, potentially disruptive reality that p...
Social Studies of Science, 2021
Much current work in Science and Technology Studies inflects knowing with care. Analyses of the e... more Much current work in Science and Technology Studies inflects knowing with care. Analyses of the ethos of objectivity, and of the practices by which objectivity is crafted, have shown that knowing and caring cannot be thought apart from each other. Using case studies from our own work we analyse how, in the sociotechnical relationships that we study, knowing and caring are entangled through ‘attachments’. We appreciate – both in the sense of valuing or respecting and in the sense of evaluating or assessing – how the notion of ‘attachment’ invites re-imagining relations between the social and the technical, between knowers and objects known, and between sociotechnical work and the affective sensibilities that enable, and are brought to life by, such work. Our respective ethnographic engagements with dog-human relations, obesity surgery and dementia care demonstrate that it is agents’ diverse and shifting attachments to technologies and techniques that shape the ways in which bodies, k...
Drawing on Critical Policy Studies and feminist STS, this article conceptualizes obesity preventi... more Drawing on Critical Policy Studies and feminist STS, this article conceptualizes obesity prevention activities as ongoing and precarious practices of relating-rather than as means for 'getting results' or vehicles through which normative discourses are instilled. It focuses on 'community approaches' within public health, whose aim is to stimulate healthy initiatives from what policy makers term 'bottom-up', emerging from the situations, concerns and abilities within neighbourhoods. Drawing on ethnographic research on the 'Amsterdam Healthy Weight Programme', I demonstrate that different practices of relating enact particular versions of health and community. I warn that reliance on statistics-based problem definitions, dietary advice and professional hierarchies preconfigures health promotion as a matter of 'reaching out' to particular 'problem populations' defined around class and ethnicity. I show, however, that community approaches may also foster spaces for 'situated caring', where health emerges in the negotiation of heterogeneous goods, including neighbourhood revival, togetherness and fun. Situated caring has effects that cannot be captured by obesity prevalence statistics. The study of health promotion policies as practices of relating highlights that policy is not a monolithic structure of plans and commitments but is continuously done and redone. The article, then, introduces a new evaluative field that critically articulates the diverse ways in which ideals such as engagement and health are enacted in practices.
In this article, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the Netherlands, I explore how weight manag... more In this article, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the Netherlands, I explore how weight management practices adapt scientific knowledge to the pragmatics of daily life. I contrast two 'metabolic logics': one premises calculating food and exercise to ensure energy balance; the other, operating as a critique to the first, puts its hope in activating people's metabolic rate. Metabolic logics, I stress, do not just present ideas on bodily functioning. They are also and importantly a practical and material affair. The first approach incites a desire and sense of responsibility in people to have control over and correct their bodies, while the second, foregrounding less measurable forms of health, hinges on a person's responsivity and trust in other active entities. Metabolic practices do not merely follow scientific insights into how fat comes about; they include estimations of what knowledge is helpful in daily life when overweight is a concern. However, innovation is difficult, as in exercise machines, recommended dietary intakes or diet shakes, figures of food as fuel and bodies as machines stubbornly sediment. In conclusion, I suggest that when 'thinking metabolically' we address metabolism as part of the socio-material practices that narrate eating, bodies and moving together in particular ways.
In this article, I describe the processes through which patients diagnosed with ‘morbid obesity’ ... more In this article, I describe the processes through which patients diagnosed with ‘morbid obesity’ become active subjects through undergoing obesity surgery and an empowerment lifestyle programme in a Dutch obesity clinic. Following work in actor-network theory and material semiotics that complicates the distinction between active and passive subjects, I trace how agency is configured and re-distributed throughout the treatment trajectory. In the clinic's elaborate care assemblage – consisting of dieticians, exercise coaches and psychologists – the person is not only actively involved in his/her own change, the subject of intervention is the self as ‘actor’: his/her material constitution, inclinations and feelings. The empirical examples reveal that a self becomes capable of self-care only after a costly and laborious conditioning through which patients are completely transformed. In this work, the changed body, implying a new, potentially disruptive reality that patients must learn to cope with, is pivotal to what the patient can do and become. Rather than striving to be disembodied, self-contained liberal subjects that make sensible decisions for their body, patients become empowered through submission and attachment and by arranging support.
Drawing on participant observation in a ‘mindful weight loss’ course
offered in the Netherlands, ... more Drawing on participant observation in a ‘mindful weight loss’ course
offered in the Netherlands, this paper explores the normative
register through which mindfulness techniques cast people in
relation to concerns with overeating and body weight. The women
seeking out mindfulness use eating to cope with troubles in their
lives and are hindered by a preoccupation with the size of their
bodies. Mindfulness coaches aim to help them let go of this
‘struggle with eating’ by posing as the central question: ‘what do I
really hunger after?’ The self’s hungers include ‘belly hunger’ but
also stem from mouths, hearts, heads, noses and eyes. They cannot
all be fed by food. The techniques detailed in this paper focus on
recognizing and disentangling one’s hungers; developing selfknowledge
of and a sensitivity to what ‘feeds’ one’s life; and the
way one positions oneself in relation to oneself and the world.
While introducing new norms, the course configures ‘goods’ and
‘bads’ in different ways altogether, shaping the worlds people come
to inhabit through engaging in self-care. In particular, the
hungering body is foregrounded as the medium through which life
is lived. Taking a material semiotic approach, this paper makes an
intervention by articulating the normative register of nourishment
in contrast to normalization. Thus, it highlights anthropologists’
potential strengthening of different ways of doing normativity.
""Public debate about who or what is to blame for the rising rates of obesity and overweight shif... more ""Public debate about who or what is to blame for the rising rates of obesity and overweight shifts between two extreme opinions. The first posits overweight as the result of a lack of individual will, the second as the outcome of bodily drives, potentially triggered by the environment. Even though apparently clashing, these positions are in fact two faces of the same liberal coin. When combined, drives figure as a complication on the road to health, while a strong will should be able to counter obesity. Either way, the body’s propensity to eat is to be put under control. Drawing on fieldwork in several obesity clinics and prevention sites in the Netherlands, this paper first traces how this ‘logic of control’ presents itself in clinical practices targeted at overweight people, and then goes on to explore how these practices move beyond that logic. Using the concepts of ‘will’ and ‘drives’ as analytical tools, I sketch several modes of ordering reality in which bodies, subjects, food and the environment are configured in different ways. In this way it appears that in clinical practices the terms found in public discourse take on different meanings and may even lose all relevance. The analysis reveals a richness of practiced ideals. The paper argues, finally, that making visible these alternative modes of ordering opens up a space for normative engagements with obesity care that move beyond the logic of control and its critiques.""
Conference Presentations by Else Vogel
The self of self-care: the case of obesity surgery
What the body wants: the ‘natural body’ in obesity care and prevention practices
Books by Else Vogel
Statistics suggest that in the Netherlands and elsewhere being overweight has become an ‘epidemic... more Statistics suggest that in the Netherlands and elsewhere being overweight has become an ‘epidemic’ and major public health concern. In response individuals are often admonished to take control of their weight. They should make so-called healthy choices and engage in good behavior. In her research, Else Vogel articulates alternatives to such calls for bodily discipline. She derives these alternatives from an ethnographic study of care practices for people who classify as overweight or obese, or who feel fat or at risk of becoming so. Vogel’s fieldwork included techniques as diverse as dietary recommendations, exercise regimes, meditation, tasting, diet shakes and surgery. These do not just intervene in the bodies of the people involved, but also reconfigure their lives. They change everyday practices and their meaning – from cooking and eating, to pain and pleasure; from shopping for food, to being a family. However, different forms of care help to shape daily life in different ways....
Thinking with Imposters: The Imposter as Analytic
The Imposter as Social Theory
Experimenting with Ethnography: A Companion to Analysis, 2021
As ethnographers we continually make differences, relations between a ‘here’ and a ‘there’, a ‘th... more As ethnographers we continually make differences, relations between a ‘here’ and a ‘there’, a ‘this’ and ‘that’. But as we compare and contrast, we also decide to keep some things stable rather than others. How do we decide which differences matter? In this chapter I discuss an analytic technique for engaging with this question, which I have coined “juxtaposition”. This technique was my strategy for dealing with a challenge all anthropologists face: how to relate to the dominant stories in our field? How to avoid strengthening them while still recognizing their power? In my attempt to ‘reverse-engineer’ the craft of this technique, I draw on my PhD research on eating and health as they get problematized in the context of the reported ‘obesity epidemic’ in the Netherlands. In my analysis, contrasting logics about healthy eating and living, in which different things were at stake, came to the fore. Juxtaposition was part of each step of my research: in relating to the literature, when making a field, in articulating worlds enacted and when writing an argument. Note the active verbs: the elements I contrasted are not out there for us to ‘find’ or ‘recognize’; they are products of the analysis. Working through juxtaposition is thus not only about doing justice to the material. It is about offering a description that is also a rescription, that changes how we can see, engage with and care for the practices we study. Describing always means intervening. This is, after all, ethnography’s critical potential
The Imposter as Social Theory: Thinking with Gatecrashers, Cheats and Charlatans
The figure of the imposter can stir complicated emotions, from intrigue to suspicion and fear. Bu... more The figure of the imposter can stir complicated emotions, from intrigue to suspicion and fear. But what insights can these troublesome figures provide into the social relations and cultural forms from which they emerge?
Edited by leading scholars in the field, this volume explores the question through a diverse range of empirical cases, including magicians, spirit possession, fake Instagram followers, fake art and fraudulent scientists.
Proposing ‘thinking with imposters’ as a valuable new tool of analysis in the social sciences and humanities, this revolutionary book shows how the figure of the imposter can help upend social theory.
Uploads
Papers by Else Vogel
offered in the Netherlands, this paper explores the normative
register through which mindfulness techniques cast people in
relation to concerns with overeating and body weight. The women
seeking out mindfulness use eating to cope with troubles in their
lives and are hindered by a preoccupation with the size of their
bodies. Mindfulness coaches aim to help them let go of this
‘struggle with eating’ by posing as the central question: ‘what do I
really hunger after?’ The self’s hungers include ‘belly hunger’ but
also stem from mouths, hearts, heads, noses and eyes. They cannot
all be fed by food. The techniques detailed in this paper focus on
recognizing and disentangling one’s hungers; developing selfknowledge
of and a sensitivity to what ‘feeds’ one’s life; and the
way one positions oneself in relation to oneself and the world.
While introducing new norms, the course configures ‘goods’ and
‘bads’ in different ways altogether, shaping the worlds people come
to inhabit through engaging in self-care. In particular, the
hungering body is foregrounded as the medium through which life
is lived. Taking a material semiotic approach, this paper makes an
intervention by articulating the normative register of nourishment
in contrast to normalization. Thus, it highlights anthropologists’
potential strengthening of different ways of doing normativity.
Conference Presentations by Else Vogel
Books by Else Vogel
Edited by leading scholars in the field, this volume explores the question through a diverse range of empirical cases, including magicians, spirit possession, fake Instagram followers, fake art and fraudulent scientists.
Proposing ‘thinking with imposters’ as a valuable new tool of analysis in the social sciences and humanities, this revolutionary book shows how the figure of the imposter can help upend social theory.