Schizophrenia, Culture, and Subjectivity
The Edge of Experience

In this volume, anthropologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and historians share aspects of illness working with the concept of schizophrenia.

Janis Hunter Jenkins (Edited by), Robert John Barrett (Edited by)

9780521829557, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 November 2003

382 pages, 7 b/w illus. 7 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm, 0.73 kg

'… the book is a superb achievement, and should become essential reading for students of mind and culture alike.' Anthropos

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.

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.

Subject Areas: Medical anthropology [PSXM], Psychiatry [MMH], Psychology [JM], Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC], Anthropology [JHM]