scholarly journals For Body, Mind and the Nation: An Archaeology of Modern Japanese Psychiatry

2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-138
Author(s):  
Bernhard Leitner
Keyword(s):  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Mental Hospital ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Social Institution ◽  
Biological Psychiatry ◽  
Disciplinary Power ◽  
Social Reforms ◽  
The Social ◽  
Meiji Era ◽  
History Of

Abstract This paper reassesses the history of psychiatry in Japan through application of the theory of disciplinary power by Michel Foucault. The society of the early Meiji era (1868-1912) is defined as a disciplinary society within the scope of discourses on punishment and general social reforms. By focussing on a close reading of both canonical and marginalised fragments of psychiatric texts, this analysis reveals their constitutive character for the establishment of psychiatric discourses. These texts, rooted in biological psychiatry, are shown to stress the hazard that mental illness presented to the nation. Recourse to juridical problems, which derive from enacting a European model of law, provides an explanation for the necessity of psychiatry as a social institution. The key point is to identify a discursive break between two major legal acts dealing with the confinement of the mentally ill: the Mental Patients Custody Act of 1900 and the Mental Hospital Act of 1919. The first deals mainly with administrative issues, while the latter was formed under the influence of an emerging psychiatric power. The Mental Hospital Act refines the disciplinary network operating in the social space, while blurring the discursive fissure between traditional care and psychiatric techniques.

scholarly journals POWER AND PUNISHMENT IN M. FOUCAULT’S GENEALOGICAL PROJECT

2019 ◽  
pp. 158-168
Author(s):  
Ivan V. Ryazanov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Space ◽  
Structural Characteristics ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Disciplinary Power ◽  
Subject Field ◽  
Object Description ◽  
Visual Model ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Analytical Reconstruction

The article proposes analytical reconstruction of the French philosopher and historian M. Foucault’s interpretation strategy related to the genealogical project The History of Punishment. The object of cognition marginalization is content moment of this reconstruction, as contributing to both the transformation of the research subject field and the genealogical identification of the object. There are defined the rules of reconstruction, contributing to the diffusion of the methodological approach to power in the genealogy of M. Foucault. The article substantiates the position that the use of some individual rules of reconstruction cannot lead to methodological unity in the genealogical project due to the marginal-positive identification of the object and the structure of The History of Punishment. Comparison of J. Deleuze’s functional analysis and M. Foucault’s genealogical approach to the problem of power points to the diffusion of the method, which is unable to localize its object in the social space. In many ways, this will be facilitated by the use of the visual model as an epistemological one, which is traditional for Foucault’s research. All the dynamic and structural characteristics that are used in Foucault’s genealogy to analyze the concept of Microphysics of power will be reduced to marginal anthropology. In the genealogical period of the French thinker’s work, marginal anthropology is regarded as a way of constructing genealogical reality. Genealogical description as a method of a marginal object description is viewed as a consequence of methodological diffusion. The phenomenon of disciplinary power is considered as a marginal construction, deriving the concept of normal-abnormal from the totality of disciplinary practices, structuring the European society. M. Foucault’s focus on marginal anthropology will serves as a basis for the transition to The History of Sexuality project.

The Social Space of Terror: Towards a Civil Interpretation of Total War

1987 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-474 ◽  
Author(s):  
K Hewitt
Keyword(s):  
Social Space ◽  
Weapons Of Mass Destruction ◽  
Main Concern ◽  
Mass Destruction ◽  
Total War ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Warfare ◽  
Urban Places ◽  
Second World

In the paper I seek to interpret modern warfare from the perspective of civil society and its geography. I emphasize the predicament of civilians who are subject to direct and deliberate armed assaults. Particular attention is given to enforced uprooting or removals of population, and to annihilation of urban places with weapons of mass destruction. Two case histories are explored, both taken from the last months of the Second World War. They are, the expulsion of German civilians from Eastern Europe, and the firebombing of Japanese cities, especially Tokyo. Damages and casualties are detailed. However, the main concern is to establish the composition, plight, and responses of civilian populations, and this includes their relation to national war efforts. It is concluded that the vast majority, because of gender, age, health, occupation, and class, were essentially marginal to, and little involved in, the war efforts of their respective states. This contrasts sharply with the assumptions or rhetoric of the theory of ‘total war’, and the practice of targetting civilians and nonmilitary areas. It is suggested that the majority of home populations remain civilians in the fullest sense of the term, even in wartime. From this it follows that assaults upon them by military forces are primarily strategies of terror, and that the ‘social space’ attacked is essentially civilian. Such uprootings and mass destruction of human settlements have, however, become an ever larger part of the war strategies, and the history of warfare, of most powers since 1945.

The History of Unreason

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Samuel Teague ◽  
Peter Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
Health And Illness ◽  
History Of

This chapter reflects on the importance of the historical narrative of mental illness, arguing that Western countries have sought new ways to confine the mentally ill in the post-asylum era, namely through the effects of stigma and medicalization. The walls are invisible, when once they were physical. The chapter outlines how health and illness can be understood as socially constructed illustrating how mental health has been constructed uniquely across cultures and over time. To understand this process more fully, it is necessary to consider the history of madness, a story of numerous social flashpoints. The trajectories of two primary mental health narratives are charted in this chapter. The authors argue that these narratives have played, and continue to play, an important role in the social construction of mental illness. These narratives are “confinement” and “individual responsibility.” Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault and Roy Porter, the authors describe how Western culture has come to consider the mentally ill as a distinct, abnormal other.

Revisiting the History of Socio-professional Classification in France

2013 ◽  
Vol 68 (04) ◽  
pp. 697-732
Author(s):  
Thomas Amossé
Keyword(s):  
Social Space ◽  
Labor Law ◽  
Social World ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Statistical Tool ◽  
Subsequent Period ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Pragmatic Sociology

The result of a process begun in the nineteenth century, the French system of socio-professional classification (code des catégories socio-professionnelles) was drawn up between 1951 and 1954 and has only been slightly modified since. With no strong theoretical framework and conceived according to a realist approach, it gave substance to social classes in the description of postwar society. During a period of “reworking” (1978-1981), it became an exciting topic of sociological exploration, furnishing a representation of Pierre Bourdieu’s two-dimensional social space and serving as a laboratory for the pragmatic sociology of Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot. In a subsequent period of “updating” (1995-2001), administrative caution regarding changes contrasted with the evolution of categories used in labor law and the goal of analytical purity underpinned by econometrics. The history of this classification details the peculiar position of a statistical tool for representing the social world, ostensibly static amidst constant changes to the institution that managed it, the actors who used it, the social categories—everyday or legal—to which it referred, and, finally, the sociological theories that gave it a conceptual grounding.

Contributions to the History of Psychology: II. Philippe Pinel: The Man and His Time

1966 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 703-720 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Mackler ◽  
Elinor Bernstein
Keyword(s):  
History Of Psychology ◽  
Treatment Programs ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Observational Methods ◽  
Social Reforms ◽  
Revolutionary Era ◽  
Moral Treatment ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

This historical study conveys the social, political, and intellectual background of Philippe Pinel, world renowned for his psychiatric reforms, his scientific analysis, and observational methods of patients and his humane, innovative, “moral” treatment programs. His psychiatric reforms are studied, not only from Pinel's perspective but also as to how the pre- and post-revolutionary era of France aided and stunted social reforms.

The mentally ill and how they were perceived in young Israel

2020 ◽  
pp. 0957154X2096465
Author(s):  
Oded Heilbronner
Keyword(s):  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Early History ◽  
Social Response ◽  
European Origin ◽  
Single Generation ◽  
Sick People ◽  
Number Of Patients ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

The article constitutes a widely researched account of mental patients and their perceptions in the early history of Israel, especially its second decade. It focuses on a single generation, which experienced the traumas of war in Europe, followed by insecurity in Israel’s struggle for independence. The article claims that in the 1960s many suffered from depression, reflected in a record number of patients in mental hospitals and mentally sick people, mostly of European origin. This study describes Israeli society in the 1960s as disturbed, immersed in nightmarish dreams and close to madness; it also discusses the genetic and neurological vulnerabilities which induced the psychosis and the social response that converted it into a chronic illness.

URBAN FOOTBALL PERFORMANCES: PLAYING FOR THE NEIGHBOURHOOD IN SENEGAL, 1950s–2000s

Africa ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susann Baller
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Urban Youth ◽  
Social Space ◽  
National Football League ◽  
Local Level ◽  
The State ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

ABSTRACTIn Senegal, neighbourhood football teams are more popular than teams in the national football league. The so-called navétanes teams were first created in the 1950s. Since the early 1970s, they have competed in local, regional and national neighbourhood championships. This article considers the history of these clubs and their championships by focusing on the city of Dakar and its fast-growing suburbs, Pikine and Guédiawaye. Research on the navétanes allows an exploration of the social and cultural history of the neighbourhoods from the actor-centred perspective of urban youth. The history of the navétanes reflects the complex interrelations between young people, the city and the state. The performative act of football – on and beyond the pitch, by players, fans and organizers – constitutes the neighbourhood as a social space in a context where the state fails to provide sufficient infrastructure and is often contested. The navétanes clubs and championships demonstrate how young people have experienced and imagined their neighbourhoods in different local-level ways, while at the same time interconnecting them with other social spaces, such as the ‘city’, the ‘nation’ and ‘the world’.

Domination and Assertion Towards a theory of educational change

1968 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Margaret Scotford Archer ◽  
Michalina Vaughan
Keyword(s):  
Educational Change ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Social Institution ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Domination ◽  
History Of ◽  
Do So

In the sociology of Max Weber, the history of any social institution corresponds to the constant interplay of a dominant and an assertive group and their supportive ideologies. While Weber himself posited the relevance of such interaction for the study of educational change, he limited himself to the description of historical stages in this process without attempting to account for their sequence. To do so requires a specification of the necessary condition for successful educational domination or assertion by any group. The factors of such domination over the social institution of education may at times coincide with those required for social domination–defined as domination over the main institutions of a society. This coincidence will depend on the degree to which education is integrated with other social institutions. When education is largely unintegrated with such institutions, the group dominating it will tend to be distinct from the ruling group in society. A corresponding statement can be made about assertion. However, as education is never completely autonomous, a theory of educational change (1) necessarily goes beyond this institution to the extent to which it is integrated with others.

scholarly journals Psychiatry in Vilnius in 16th–20th Centuries: Review on Social Transformations

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 246-262
Author(s):  
Aistis Žalnora
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Analysis ◽  
Main Tendency ◽  
The 19Th Century

There issue of Psychiatry in Vilnius is unexplored field especially in a terms of its social aspects. Most of the former papers devoted to psychiatry in Vilnius were written in descriptive manner or they were uncritical case studies of one or another hospital. One of the first successful studies that was constructed by using modern methodology was a monograph of Dr. Tomas Vaisėta that described a social features of Vilnius psychiatry. However, the study is devoted to a late period – Soviet psychiatry only. Therefore the modern analysis of earlier periods and other Vilnius hospitals was still missing. In our article, we set us a goal, namely, to find the most important features, the so‑called paradigm fractures in the social history of Vilnius psychiatry. The main tendency which should be emphasized was uneven development of Vilnius psychiatry, especially in a terms of attitude towards the patient. In most cases that could be interpreted in a light of a broader Global context. In Vilnius hospitals just like in other countries mentally ill were discriminated because of their unclear social and economic status. In the earliest period the mentally ill as an outcast of society is being locked in a jail‑like mental hospitals or fall into complete favor of the monastery hospices. The 19th century positivism at least theoretically brought humane paradigm to Lithuanian psychiatry. However, because of the limited medical measures as well as economic reasons the later period was marked by the realism or even negativism of semi‑modern interwar psychiatry. Mentally ill again falls into a status of outcast or a burden to the society. The question of responsibility towards mentally ill is avoided by the community as well as by state. Nevertheless, some original solutions were found in Vilnius district. The mentally ill were employed in local farms that at‑least partly solved the issues of economic burden. Moreover, there were some more tendencies that do not fit in the global narrative. Despite the technical advance in treatment that gradually enabled the psychiatrists to help the patient, in the Soviet period we observe the opposite tendency that was to restrain and harm the mentally ill patient. In many cases even totally healthy people were misdiagnosed to be mentally ill and received harsh chemical treatment and isolation because of their personal criticism towards totalitarian Soviet system.

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