Faith and the Pursuit of Health

Cardiometabolic Disorders in Samoa

By Jessica Hardin

SERIES: Medical Anthropology

Rutgers University Press

Faith and the Pursuit of Health explores how Pentecostal Christians manage chronic illness in ways that sheds light on health disparities and social suffering in Samoa, a place where rates of obesity and related cardiometabolic disorders have reached population-wide levels. Pentecostals grapple with how to maintain the health of their congregants in an environment that fosters cardiometabolic disorders. They find ways to manage these forms of sickness and inequality through their churches and the friendships developed within these institutions. Examining how Pentecostal Christianity provides many Samoans with tools to manage day-to-day issues around health and sickness, Jessica Hardin argues for understanding the synergies between how Christianity and biomedicine practice chronicity.

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

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

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.

Table of Contents
Glossary
Note on Pronunciation
Map
Foreword
Chapter 1: Salvation and Metabolism
Chapter 2: Ethnography between Clinic and Church
Chapter 3: Discerning Ambiguous Risks
Chapter 4: Freedom and Health Responsibility
Chapter 5: Embodied Analytics
Chapter 6: Well-being and Deferred Agency
Chapter 7: Support Synergies
Chapter 8: Integrating Faith into Healthcare Practice
Acknowledgements
Endnotes
Bibliography
Index

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