Waltraud Ernst

This book offers the first systematic critical appraisal of the uses of work and work therapy in psychiatric institutions across the globe, from the late eighteenth to the end of the twentieth century. Contributors explore the daily routine in psychiatric institutions and ask whether work was therapy, part of a regime of punishment or a means of exploiting free labour. By focusing on mental patients’ day-to-day life in closed institutions, the authors fill a gap in the history of psychiatric regimes. The geographical scope is wide, ranging from Northern America to Japan, India and Western as well as Eastern Europe, and the authors engage with broad historical questions, such as the impact of colonialism and communism and the effect of the World Wars. The book presents an alternative history of the emergence of occupational therapy and will be of interest not only to academics in the fields of history and sociology but also to health professionals.

Work, psychiatry and society, c. 1750–2015

"Mad Tales from the Raj: Colonial Psychiatry in South Asia, 1800-58 is an authoritative assessment of western psychiatry within the context of British colonialism. This updated version provides a comprehensive study of official attitudes and practices in relation to both Indian and European patients during the dominance of the British East India Company. It includes a fully revised introduction that locates the work in relation to recent scholarly discourse in the field of history of colonial medicine. Based on government proceedings, medical case reports, contemporary publications, diaries and literary material, Mad Tales from the Raj provides a highly readable and illuminating account of contemporary psychiatric treatment and colonial policies. It is fascinating reading not only to students of colonial history, medical sociology and related disciplines, but to all those with a general interest in life in the colonies."--Publisher's description.

Colonial Psychiatry in South Asia, 1800-58

Mad Tales from the Raj

Bernard Harris

Considering cases from Europe to India, this collection brings together current critical research into the role played by racial issues in the production of medical knowledge. Confronting such controversial themes as colonialism and medicine, the origins of racial thinking and health and migration, the distinguished contributors examine the role played by medicine in the construction of racial categories.

Race, Science and Medicine, 1700-1960

This fascinating volume tackles the history of the terms 'normal' and 'abnormal'. Originally meaning 'as occurring in nature', normality has taken on significant cultural gravitas and this book recognizes and explores that fact. The essays engage with the concepts of the normal and the abnormal from the perspectives of a variety of academic disciplines – ranging from art history to social history of medicine, literature, and science studies to sociology and cultural anthropology. The contributors use as their conceptual anchors the works of moral and political philosophers such as Canguilhem, Foucault and Hacking, as well as the ideas put forward by sociologists including Durkheim and Illich. With contributions from a range of scholars across differing disciplines, this book will have a broad appeal to students in many areas of history.

Social and Cultural Histories of Norms and Normativity

Histories of the Normal and the Abnormal

Leben und Wirtschaften -- Geschlechterkonstruktionen durch Arbeit

Ilona Horwath

What role does gender play in scientific research and the development of technologies? This book provides methodological expertise, research experiences and empirical findings in the dynamic field of Science and Technology Studies. The authors, coming from computer science, social sciences, or cultural studies of science, discuss how to ask questions about gender and give examples for the application in interdisciplinary research, development and teaching. Topics range from the design of information and communication technologies, epistemologies of biology and chemistry to teaching mathematics and professional processes in engineering. Contributions by Anne Balsamo, Wendy Faulkner, Rebecca Jordan-Young, Barbara Orland, Els Rommes, and others.

Interdisciplinary Approaches

Gender in Science and Technology

Thomas Mueller

This book offers something new in the history of psychiatry. Within a transnational research framework, it presents original historical case studies and conceptual reflections on comparative and related methodologies. Systematic comparison and transfer studies as well as aspects of entangled history are employed in relation to themes such as different cultural meanings pertaining to the same term; transfer of treatment practices and institutional regimes; localised practices and (re)-emerging forms of patient care; circulation of early anti-psychiatrists’ views; impact of war and politics on patients’ welfare and on psychiatric discourse; and diversification of psychotherapeutic and physical practices. The book includes chapters on the history and historiography of psychiatry and psychotherapy in different geo-cultural regions in South America, Asia, the Pacific and Europe. The contributors present multilayered interpretations, emphasising commonalities and interconnections as well as contrasts and discontinuities. With its wide-ranging geographical focus and attention to conceptual issues, this collection will assist to integrate and reconfigure the historiography of psychiatry.

Social and Cultural Histories of Psychiatry in Comparative Perspective c. 1800-2000

Transnational Psychiatries

‘Mad Tales from the Raj’ is an authoritative assessment of western psychiatry within the context of British colonialism. This revised version provides a comprehensive study of official attitudes and practices in relation to both Indian and European patients during the dominance of the British East India Company. It is fascinating reading not only to students of colonial history, medical sociology and related disciplines, but to all those with a general interest in life in the colonies.

Naturbilder und Lebensgrundlagen - Konstruktionen von Geschlecht

Beatriz Revelles Benavente

Monika Rogowska-Stangret

For the editors of this collection, new materialisms have always been the entanglement of epistemology, ontology, ethics, and politics. Looking back to the notion of “situated knowledges” (Haraway, 1988) that – among others – “planted the seed for feminist new materialism” (van der Tuin, 2015, 26) – one sees how those (at least) four planes are entangled (Rogowska-Stangret, 2018) in order to bring forth “response-able” (Haraway, 2008) research. New materialism is thus an ethico-onto-epistemological framework (Barad, 2007; Revelles-Benavente, 2018) that by activating its ethico-politics helps to diagnose, infer, and transform gendered, environmental, anthropocentric, social injustices from a multidimensional angle. Social injustices are a driving motivation to pursue research and are the reason why the editors and authors of this Special Issue cannot understand new materialism without feminism (in the lines of eds. Hinton & Teusch, 2015). Contemporary feminist researchers are providing new materialisms with a transversal approach, (Yuval-Davis 1997) that comes from many different disciplines without canonizing back again knowledge creation and production and in hope that they will not enter back into classifixations (van der Tuin, 2015). It is “situated” (Haraway, 1988) research “response-able” (Haraway, 2008) to material-discursive practices that iterate in a dynamic conceptualization of matter.

Waltraud Ernst

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