scholarly journals Reflections on Asylum Archives and the Experience of Mental Illness in Paris

2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia E. Prestwich

This article is a personal reflection on the challenges and rewards of doing research on the social history of mental illness and health. The author uses her experiences with the archives of a Parisian psychiatric hospital to discuss some ways of dealing with an overwhelming mass of archival material and the inevitable frustrations and silences that result from trying to do history from the patient’s point of view. The importance of such archival research on mental illness is discussed within the context of a long history of French efforts to provide health care for “citizen-patients.” The article argues that such archives not only provide a wealth of material on the history of illness but that they offer important perspectives on other political and social issues, including the development of the welfare state, the maintenance of public order, and the varied experiences of citizenship.

1976 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith J. Hurwich

Puritanism has long fascinated students of the relationship between religion and society. Indeed, the social history of Puritanism has probably been studied more intensively than that of any other religious movement in modern history. However, most studies of Puritanism in England end either at the beginning of the Civil Wars or at the Restoration. The history of those Puritans who became Dissenters after 1660 has been left to denominational historians, who are understandably more concerned with the ecclesiastical and theological history of their own particular groups than with the broader question of the place of Dissent in English society.This neglect of post-Restoration Nonconformity is unfortunate for the study of the social history of Puritanism, both from a theoretical and from a practical point of view. When English Puritans are cited as the classical practitioners of the “Protestant ethic,” reference is often made to the success of Nonconformists in finance and industry after 1660. Tawney's application of the Weber thesis to England relies heavily on the writings of such post-Restoration divines as Baxter and Steele, and on the rise of Nonconformist capitalists in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Tawney's hypotheses cannot be evaluated unless we have more information about the social background of Dissent: not merely a few exceptional individuals, but the group as a whole. From the practical point of view, quantitative studies of the social structure — both of the religious group and of the larger society—are more easily undertaken for the period after 1660 than for the period before that date.


Author(s):  
I. S. Tomilov

The study reviews scientific literature concerning the cities of the Tobolsk province in the late XVIII – early XX centuries. The article  features the works of scientists, published in the pre-revolutionary  period and affecting different sides of the subject in question. The  results of the research indicate that before 1917 the scientific works  were mainly concentrated on such aspects of urban life as  demography, trade, administration, urban space, education, local  government, and periodicals. The authors did not distinguish the  concept of «social life» as a separate phenomenon, limiting the  study of its individual components. The methodology includes the  use of techniques and tools of local, systemic, comparative- historical, and problem-chronological methods, as well as  developments «history of everyday life» and «new Imperial history». In general, the article emphasizes the expansion of scientific  knowledge about the social history of Siberian cities in the post- reform and late Imperial periods, reveals the influence of the  researchers ' views on the integration of urban life. The scope of the  study is not limited to the interest of historians, urbanists and local  historians to the subject of study. Historiographical analysis is  relevant from the point of view of modern discussions about the  prospects of urban studies, and can also be used in the preparation  of textbooks and summaries on Siberian history. 


1989 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-254 ◽  
Author(s):  
Z.J. Lipowski

After a period marked by one-sided emphasis on psycho-dynamics and social issues, or what could be called “brainless” psychiatry on account of its relative neglect of cerebral processes, we are witnessing an opposite trend towards extreme biologism or “mindless” psychiatry. The pendulum has swung periodically from one to the other of these reductionists positions throughout the history of psychiatry. The author argues that neither brainless nor mindless psychiatry can do justice to the complexity of mental illness and to the treatment of patients. Psychiatry's distinguishing feature as a clinical discipline is its equal concern with subjective experience, or the mind, and with the body, including brain function, which together constitute a person, a psychiatrist's proper focus of inquiry and intervention. Moreover, a person, viewed as a mindbody complex, is in constant interaction with the environment. It follows that both study of mental illness and clinical practice need to take into account the psychological, the biological and the social aspects. These three aspects are not mutually reducible and are indispensable for the understanding and treatment of the individual patient. Such a comprehensive, biopsychosocial approach provides an antithesis to the reductionistic viewpoints and, in the writer's opinion, is both practically and theoretically most satisfying.


Author(s):  
Daniel R. Brower

In what ways did the development of cities in late tsarist Russiaalter the character of social relations and conflicts in that keyperiod? At first glance, the question may appear poorly posed. It has long been customary to assess the history of Russian society in the nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries in terms of estate and class, to evaluate change by class differentiation, and to look for the sources of social conflict in the strains engendered by the transformation (to the extent it occurred) of a "society of estates" into a "society of classes." The urban centers of the country fran this point of view provided merely the setting in which key segments of the population experienced and reacted to new economic forces and politicalpressures. Recent books in the social history of the time havesubstantially enlarged and enriched our understanding of the changes under way among the urban population.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
pp. 87-95
Author(s):  
Klimova Olga G. ◽  

The study of the socio-cultural activities of entrepreneurs including the history of everyday life as its integral part is one of the important aspects of the study of regional history. The historiography of the history of socio-cultural practices in pre-revolutionary Siberia has not been fully studied yet. The purpose of the article is to identify the patterns of the modern historiographic situation on the basis of understanding the study of the history of socio-cultural practices of business people in pre-revolutionary Siberia. The work used the general methods of scientific knowledge: historicism, logical analysis, deduction and induction, which made it possible to conduct a consistent analysis of the works of researchers, to identify the main characteristics. Modern researchers in their works have raised a number of problems: trends in the development of charity, the scope of investment of donated money, forms of participation in various events, contributions to the development of libraries, museums, schools, orphanages, etc. Historians used quantitative indicators of the participation of entrepreneurs in the social and cultural life of Siberian cities, the motives of the merchants’ charity. The following topics were studied: support for education, participation in the improvement of cities, contribution to the development of culture and museum affairs, financing of expeditions, church and charitable activities, targeted assistance to those in need. In general, and in the conclusions of this article, the expansion of scientific knowledge about the socio-social history of Siberia after the reform period is emphasized, the points of view of historians on the role and place of businessmen in the cultural and social spheres of the life of the region are revealed. Historiographic analysis is relevant from the point of view of modern discussions about the contribution of entrepreneurs to the development of cities, culture, economy, and charity in pre-revolutionary Siberia. The revival of entrepreneurship, modern socio-economic processes encourage specialists to in-depth study of the history of socio-cultural practices of the Siberian merchants.


1952 ◽  
Vol 42 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 13-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Browning

The riot at Antioch in the early spring of A.D. 387 is described in two eye-witness accounts, that of Libanius—in particular Orations 19–23—and that of John Chrysostom—in particular the 21 Homiliae ad populum Antiochenum de statuis. Consequently, it has often been studied in more or less detail by modern scholars, each approaching it from his own point of view. It might seem that all that could be said has been said. Nevertheless, certain features of the disorders, which have some interest for the social history of the period, have not been adequately dealt with. It is as a contribution to the understanding of these that the present study is written.


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