Suchergebnisse

This essay explores recent developments in theorizing subjectivity, with a particular focus on medical and psychiatric anthropology. It suggests that studies of violence and humanitarian interventions, new medical technologies, and new modes of citizenship challenge older ways of writing about the subject and lived experience. The essay outlines four claims about the study of subjectivity – that 'subjectivity' denotes a set of issues quite different than classic studies of 'self' or 'person'; that viewing subjectivity through the lens of the 'postcolonial' provides a language and analytic strategies valuable for addressing such issues; that attention to 'disorders', social as well as individual, is critical to the ethnography of subjectivity; and that such ethnography requires theory and methods that facilitate attending to that which is 'unspeakable and unspoken'. The essay then provides three ethnographic vignettes from the author's work in Indonesia, using each to explore a domain central to the ethnography of subjectivity. First, it discusses the importance of the study of the genealogy of the modern subject and of distinctive patterns of modernity for anthropological research on subjectivity. Second, it outlines a particular perspective on the psychological subject. And, third, it addresses 'the eruption of the political', the ethnography of post‐conflict settings, and participation in intervention as critical sites for inquiry into subjectivity. The essay juxtaposes Cavell's philosophy of 'the Ordinary' with current psychoanalytic theories as approaches to bringing that which societies and individuals keep 'hidden in plain view' into the purview of writing on subjectivity.RésuméLe présent essai explore l'évolution récente de la théorisation de la subjectivité et se concentre en particulier sur l'anthropologie médicale et psychiatrique. Il suggère que les anciens modes de description du sujet et de l'expérience vécue ne sont plus adaptés aux études de la violence et des interventions humanitaires, des nouvelles technologies médicales et des nouvelles formes de citoyenneté. L'auteur met en lumière quatre propositions concernant l'étude de la subjectivité : « la subjectivité » désigne un ensemble de questions différentes de celles des études classiques du « soi » ou de « la personne » ; l'examen de la subjectivitéà travers une lorgnette « postcoloniale » crée un langage et des stratégies analytiques utiles pour aborder ces questions ; il est indispensable pour l'ethnographie de la subjectivité de s'intéresser aux « troubles », sociaux aussi bien qu'individuels; l'ethnographie a besoin d'une théorie et d'une méthodologie facilitant l'examen de ce qui est « indicible et non dit ». L'essai livre ensuite trois instantanés ethnographiques tirés du travail de terrain de l'auteur en Indonésie, en explorant par le biais de chacun des trois un domaine central de l'ethnographie de la subjectivité. Il aborde pour commencer l'importance de l'étude de la généalogie du sujet moderne et des schémas distinctifs de modernité dans la recherche anthropologique sur la subjectivité. Il met ensuite en lumière une approche particulière du sujet psychologique. Enfin, il s'intéresse à« l'éruption du politique », à l'ethnographie des contextes post‐conflictuels et à la participation à l'intervention comme autant de points cruciaux dans l'étude de la subjectivité. Cet essai superpose la philosophie de « l'Ordinaire » de Cavell aux théories psychanalytiques actuelles pour amener dans le champ de vision de l'écriture sur la subjectivité ce que les sociétés et les individus tiennent « caché au grand jour ».

Since the 1970s, understanding of the effects of trauma, including flashbacks and withdrawal, has become widespread in the United States. As a result Americans can now claim that the phrase posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is familiar even if the American Psychiatric Association's criteria for diagnosis are not. As embedded as these ideas now are in the American mindset, however, they are more widely applicable, this volume attempts to show, than is generally recognized. The essays in Culture and PTSD trace how trauma and its effects vary across historical and cultural contexts.Culture and PTSD examines the applicability of PTSD to other cultural contexts and details local responses to trauma and the extent they vary from PTSD as defined in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Investigating responses in Peru, Indonesia, Haiti, and Native American communities as well as among combat veterans, domestic abuse victims, and adolescents, contributors attempt to address whether PTSD symptoms are present and, if so, whether they are a salient part of local responses to trauma. Moreover, the authors explore other important aspects of the local presentation and experience of trauma-related disorder, whether the Western concept of PTSD is known to lay members of society, and how the introduction of PTSD shapes local understandings and the course of trauma-related disorders.By attempting to determine whether treatments developed for those suffering PTSD in American and European contexts are effective in global settings of violence or disaster, Culture and PTSD questions the efficacy of international responses that focus on trauma.Contributors: Carmela Alcántara, Tom Ball, James K. Boehnlein, Naomi Breslau, Whitney Duncan, Byron J. Good, Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good, Jesse H. Grayman, Bridget M. Haas, Devon E. Hinton, Erica James, Janis H. Jenkins, Hanna Kienzler, Brandon Kohrt

Since the appearance of Derrida's Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International in 1994, there has been an outpouring of writing in cultural studies around the themes of hauntology and spectralities. This article asks broadly whether a form of hauntology has emerged within anthropology; if so, when and how it has appeared; and what constitutes such a field as distinctive. This article asks what comprises being haunted as a specific affective state within anthropological writing, what theory of the subject is assumed by such writings, and what distinguishes ethnographic analyses that do not dismiss the presence of ghosts as simply cultural beliefs or literary fictions, as is common in cultural studies. It reviews the literature on the haunting remains of traumatic violence, examines writing that juxtaposes hauntological and ontological theorizing, describes the appearance of an incipient hauntological voice within ethnographic writing, and concludes with a discussion of the emergence of a hauntological ethics.

The cultural understanding of illness among caregivers of first-episode psychotic persons is a crucial issue. Not only does it influence caregivers' care-seeking behavior and length of time until receiving medical treatment (known as the 'duration of untreated psychosis' or DUP), but it also predicts the outcome of the illness. This article aims to explore cultural understanding and care-seeking behavior among caregivers of psychotic patients in Java, Indonesia. Data for this article have been taken from two studies conducted by our research group in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Methods of data collection include surveys, case studies, ethnographic fieldwork, and in-depth interviews. Results of analyses, within and across studies, indicate that caregivers have employed diverse cultural explanatory models in order to understand psychotic illness. Local cultural beliefs, including possession and forms of black magic, were among the most common initial concepts held by family members in relation to psychosis. This echoes broader cultural beliefs in Java. However, it was not uncommon for caregivers to also understand illness in psychological terms (such as frustration, disappointment, and stress) and attached medical explanations. Caregivers' understanding of illness also changed over time following the changing course of the illness. Both models of illness and the rapidity of care-seeking are also related to the acuteness of onset. This article concludes that it is important for mental health providers, as well as those designing systems of care, to understand the diversity and changing nature of caregivers' cultural understanding of psychotic illness.

The essays in this volume reflect on the nature of subjectivity in the diverse places where anthropologists work at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Contributors explore everyday modes of social and psychological experience, the constitution of the subject, and forms of subjection that shape the lives of Basque youth, Indonesian artists, members of nongovernmental HIV/AIDS programs in China and the Republic of Congo, psychiatrists and the mentally ill in Morocco and Ireland, and persons who have suffered trauma or been displaced by violence in the Middle East and in South and Southeast Asia. Painting on book jacket by Entang Wiharso

This innovative volume is an extended intellectual conversation about the ways personal lives are being undone and remade today. Examining the ethnography of the modern subject, this preeminent group of scholars probes the continuity and diversity of modes of personhood across a range of Western and non-Western societies. Contributors consider what happens to individual subjectivity when stable or imagined environments such as nations and communities are transformed or displaced by free trade economics, terrorism, and war; how new information and medical technologies reshape the relation one has to oneself; and which forms of subjectivity and life possibilities are produced against a world in pieces. The transdisciplinary conversation includes anthropologists, historians of science, psychologists, a literary critic, a philosopher, physicians, and an economist. The authors touch on how we think and write about contingency, human agency, and ethics today

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- 1. Willing Contours: Locating Volition in Anthropological Theory -- 2. In the Midst of Action -- 3. Moral Willing As Narrative Re-Envisioning -- 4. By the Will of Others or by One's Own Action? -- 5. Willful Souls: Dreaming and the Dialectics of Self-Experience Among the Tzotzil Maya of Highland Chiapas, Mexico -- 6. Transforming Will/Transforming Culture -- 7. How Can Will Be Expressed and What Role Does the Imagination Play? -- 8. Emil Kraepelin on Pathologies of the Will -- Afterword: Willing in Context -- Notes -- References -- List of Contributors -- Index

Anthropologists have expressed wariness about the concept of evil even in discussions of morality and ethics, in part because the concept carries its own cultural baggage and theological implications in Euro-American societies. Addressing the problem of evil as a distinctly human phenomenon and a category of ethnographic analysis, this volume shows the usefulness of engaging evil as a descriptor of empirical reality where concepts such as violence, criminality, and hatred fall short of capturing the darkest side of human existence