Schizophrenia, Culture, and Subjectivity
Schizophrenia, Culture, and Subjectivity
Robert John Barrett, University of Adelaide
This volume brings together a number of the foremost scholars - anthropologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and historians - studying schizophrenia, its subjective dimensions, and the cultural processes through which these are experienced. Based on research undertaken in Australia, Bangladesh, Borneo, Canada, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, the United States and Zanzibar, it also incorporates a critical analysis of World Health Organization cross-cultural findings. Contributors share an interest in subjective and interpretive aspects of illness, but all work with a concept of schizophrenia that addresses its biological dimensions. The volume is of interest to scholars in the social and human sciences for the theoretical attention given to the relationship between culture and subjectivity. Multidisciplinary in design, it is written in a style accessible to a diverse readership, including undergraduate students. It is of practical relevance not only to psychiatrists, but also to all mental health professionals.
- Demonstrates culture is critical in nearly every aspect of schizophrenia, including the identification of the illness, social responses, support, stigma, and outcome of illness
- Elucidates the connections between a person's local world and the subjective experience of schizophrenia
- Illustrates that social and cultural engagement is a crucial element of recovery from schizophrenia
Reviews & endorsements
'… the book is a superb achievement, and should become essential reading for students of mind and culture alike.' Anthropos
Product details
January 2004Paperback
9780521536417
382 pages
229 × 152 × 22 mm
0.54kg
7 b/w illus. 7 tables
Available
Table of Contents
- Foreword Arthur Kleinman
- Introduction Janis H. Jenkins and Robert J. Barrett
- Part I. Specifying Culture, Self and Experience:
- 1. Schizophrenia as a paradigm for understanding fundamental human processes Janis H. Jenkins
- 2. Interrogating 'culture' in the WHO International Studies of Schizophrenia Kim Hopper
- 3. Kurt Schneider in Borneo: do first rank symptoms apply to the Iban? Robert J. Barrett
- 4. Living through a staggering world: the play of signifiers in early psychosis in South India Ellen Corin, R. Thara and R. Padmavati
- 5. In and out of culture: ethnographic means to interpreting schizophrenia Rod Lucas
- Part II. Four Approaches:
- 6. Experiences of psychosis in Javanese culture: reflections on a case of acute, recurrent psychosis in contemporary Yogyakarta, Indonesia Byron Good and M. A. Subandi
- 7. To 'speak beautifully' in Bangladesh: subjectivity as pa/gala/mi James M. Wilce, Jr.
- 8. Innovative care for the homeless mentally ill in Bogota, Columbia Esperanza Diaz, Alberto Fergusson and John S. Strauss
- 9. Symptoms of colonialism: content and context of delusion in Southwest Nigeria, 1945–60 Jonathan Sadowsky
- Part III. Subjectivity and Emotion:
- 10. Madness in Zanzibar: an exploration of lived experience Juli H. McGruder
- 11. Subject/subjectiveness in dispute: the poetics, politics, and performance of first-person narratives of people with schizophrenia Sue E. Estroff
- 12. 'Negative symptoms', common sense, and cultural disembedding in the modern age Louis A. Sass
- 13. Subjective experience of emotion in schizophrenia Ann M. Kring and Marja K. Germans.
