The Gift of Fear vs Culture and weight consciousness

The Gift of Fear

Gavin de Becker

1997

A carjacker lurking in a shopping mall parking lot. An abusive husband pounding on the door. A disgruntled employee brandishing a gun. These days, no one is safe from the specter of violence. But according to Gavin de Becker, everyone can feel safer, act safer, be safer -- if they learn how to listen to their own sixth sense about danger. De Becker has made a career of protecting people and predicting violent behavior. His firm handles security for many of Hollywood's top celebrities -- Madonna, Michael J. Fox, Geena Davis, Brooke Shields, and John Travolta, among others, according to press reports -- and his computerized risk-assessment system helps analyze threats to members of Congress and the Supreme Court. Now, in this unprecedented guide, de Becker shares his expertise with everyone. Covering all the dangerous situations people typically face -- street crime, domestic abuse, violence in the workplace -- de Becker provides real-life examples and offers specific advice on restraining orders, self-defense, and more. But the key to self-protection, he demonstrates, is learning how to trust -- and act on -- our own intuitions. For everyone who's ever felt threatened, this book is essential reading.

Culture and weight consciousness

Mervat Nasser

1997

Anorexia nervosa and bulimia are among the few psychiatric syndromes with a plausible socio-cultural model of causation. Issues of culture and slimness are usually considered in terms of the experience of the western world, but there is a growing body of research suggesting that concern with slimness is becoming more prevalent in non-western cultures. In Culture and Weight Consciousness, Mervat Nasser brings together this research and looks at the recent emergence of eating disorders in cultures that were previously free of such problems. She relates the feminist theories that have been put forward to explain the phenomenon of eating disorders in the west to the condition of modern women in many non-western cultures and concludes that their position is not at all that different from that of their western counterparts. This leads her to address the current limitations of the concept of culture and draw out the implications for future research.