Joseph D. Calabrese
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199665372
- eISBN:
- 9780191748585
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199665372.003.0003
- Subject:
- Public Health and Epidemiology, Public Health, Epidemiology
Clinical Ethnography: Ethnographic Approaches to Health Experiences Research. This chapter introduces ethnographic (participant observation) approaches to study of health experiences. Ethnographers ...
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Clinical Ethnography: Ethnographic Approaches to Health Experiences Research. This chapter introduces ethnographic (participant observation) approaches to study of health experiences. Ethnographers studying health experiences immerse themselves in sociocultural contexts of illness and treatment for prolonged fieldwork periods to collect descriptive data and form an understanding of local culture and embodied experience. They pay close attention to insiders’ views in natural contexts and go for a depth of understanding rather than large sample sizes. This chapter discusses the origins of ethnography in the anthropological study of small scale societies and the subsequent application of the approach in hospitals and other medical settings. The chapter will discuss strengths of the approach (e.g. that it takes into account what people do as well as what they say and allows us to discover new information) as well as limitations (e.g. that it is time consuming and requires a special personal commitment by the researcher).Less
Clinical Ethnography: Ethnographic Approaches to Health Experiences Research. This chapter introduces ethnographic (participant observation) approaches to study of health experiences. Ethnographers studying health experiences immerse themselves in sociocultural contexts of illness and treatment for prolonged fieldwork periods to collect descriptive data and form an understanding of local culture and embodied experience. They pay close attention to insiders’ views in natural contexts and go for a depth of understanding rather than large sample sizes. This chapter discusses the origins of ethnography in the anthropological study of small scale societies and the subsequent application of the approach in hospitals and other medical settings. The chapter will discuss strengths of the approach (e.g. that it takes into account what people do as well as what they say and allows us to discover new information) as well as limitations (e.g. that it is time consuming and requires a special personal commitment by the researcher).
T.M. Luhrmann and Jocelyn Marrow (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780520291089
- eISBN:
- 9780520964945
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520291089.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Medical Anthropology
This book examines the way schizophrenia is shaped by its social context: how life is lived with this madness in different settings, and what it is about those settings that alters the course of the ...
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This book examines the way schizophrenia is shaped by its social context: how life is lived with this madness in different settings, and what it is about those settings that alters the course of the illness, its outcome, and even the structure of its symptoms. Until recently, schizophrenia was perhaps our best example—our poster child—for the “bio-bio-bio” model of psychiatric illness: genetic cause, brain alteration, pharmacologic treatment. We now have direct epidemiological evidence that people are more likely to fall ill with schizophrenia in some social settings than in others, and more likely to recover in some social settings than in others. Something about the social world gets under the skin. This book presents twelve case studies written by psychiatric anthropologists that help to illustrate some of the variability in the social experience of schizophrenia and that illustrate the main hypotheses about the different experience of schizophrenia in the west and outside the west--and in particular, why schizophrenia seems to have a more benign course and outcome in India. We argue that above all it is the experience of “social defeat” that increases the risk and burden of schizophrenia, and that opportunities for social defeat are more abundant in the modern west. There is a new role for anthropology in the science of schizophrenia. Psychiatric science has learned—epidemiologically, empirically, quantitatively—that our social world makes a difference. But the highly structured, specific-variable analytic methods of standard psychiatric science cannot tell us what it is about culture that has that impact. The careful observation enabled by rich ethnography allows us to see in more detail what kinds of social and cultural features may make a difference to a life lived with schizophrenia. And if we understand culture’s impact more deeply, we believe that we may improve the way we reach out to help those who struggle with our most troubling madness.Less
This book examines the way schizophrenia is shaped by its social context: how life is lived with this madness in different settings, and what it is about those settings that alters the course of the illness, its outcome, and even the structure of its symptoms. Until recently, schizophrenia was perhaps our best example—our poster child—for the “bio-bio-bio” model of psychiatric illness: genetic cause, brain alteration, pharmacologic treatment. We now have direct epidemiological evidence that people are more likely to fall ill with schizophrenia in some social settings than in others, and more likely to recover in some social settings than in others. Something about the social world gets under the skin. This book presents twelve case studies written by psychiatric anthropologists that help to illustrate some of the variability in the social experience of schizophrenia and that illustrate the main hypotheses about the different experience of schizophrenia in the west and outside the west--and in particular, why schizophrenia seems to have a more benign course and outcome in India. We argue that above all it is the experience of “social defeat” that increases the risk and burden of schizophrenia, and that opportunities for social defeat are more abundant in the modern west. There is a new role for anthropology in the science of schizophrenia. Psychiatric science has learned—epidemiologically, empirically, quantitatively—that our social world makes a difference. But the highly structured, specific-variable analytic methods of standard psychiatric science cannot tell us what it is about culture that has that impact. The careful observation enabled by rich ethnography allows us to see in more detail what kinds of social and cultural features may make a difference to a life lived with schizophrenia. And if we understand culture’s impact more deeply, we believe that we may improve the way we reach out to help those who struggle with our most troubling madness.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816674749
- eISBN:
- 9781452947341
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816674749.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
The book traces the interactions of American allopathic medicine, industrial capitalism, and the human desire for sleep from the late 18th century through the turn of the 21st century. The foundation ...
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The book traces the interactions of American allopathic medicine, industrial capitalism, and the human desire for sleep from the late 18th century through the turn of the 21st century. The foundation of contemporary American sleep is laid in the 19th century, when industrial workday demands the coordination and consolidation of sleeping and waking patterns. What was lost in this transition was unconsolidated sleep – instead of two nightly periods of rest, or daily naps supplemented with nightly sleep, one eight hour period of sleep was substituted as a new norm. This norm laid the basis for the emerging field of sleep medicine, which took as its primary concern the eradication of napping and insomnia, and substituting eight regular and consolidated hours of sleep. This invention of consolidated sleep led to the eventual pathologization of many forms of sleep, and provided the basis for contemporary sleep medicine. The present interest in sleep, exemplified by advertising campaigns for “Z drugs” – a new chemical that promotes and consolidates sleep – is not so much new as an intensification of a two hundred year old interest in making “normal” American sleep. In the present, I focus on the lives of physicians, scientists, patients and their families as they deal with the social frictions that sleep disorders are accepted as causing. I argue in the conclusion that by recognizing the human limits of sleep, we can apprehend sleep’s variations as non-pathological, and that with more flexible social institutions and expectations, the medicalization of sleep might be subverted.Less
The book traces the interactions of American allopathic medicine, industrial capitalism, and the human desire for sleep from the late 18th century through the turn of the 21st century. The foundation of contemporary American sleep is laid in the 19th century, when industrial workday demands the coordination and consolidation of sleeping and waking patterns. What was lost in this transition was unconsolidated sleep – instead of two nightly periods of rest, or daily naps supplemented with nightly sleep, one eight hour period of sleep was substituted as a new norm. This norm laid the basis for the emerging field of sleep medicine, which took as its primary concern the eradication of napping and insomnia, and substituting eight regular and consolidated hours of sleep. This invention of consolidated sleep led to the eventual pathologization of many forms of sleep, and provided the basis for contemporary sleep medicine. The present interest in sleep, exemplified by advertising campaigns for “Z drugs” – a new chemical that promotes and consolidates sleep – is not so much new as an intensification of a two hundred year old interest in making “normal” American sleep. In the present, I focus on the lives of physicians, scientists, patients and their families as they deal with the social frictions that sleep disorders are accepted as causing. I argue in the conclusion that by recognizing the human limits of sleep, we can apprehend sleep’s variations as non-pathological, and that with more flexible social institutions and expectations, the medicalization of sleep might be subverted.
Thomas J. Csordas
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780520288423
- eISBN:
- 9780520963368
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520288423.003.0023
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Anthropology, Religion
The early 21st century has seen a resurgence in the performance of exorcism in the Catholic Church. Exorcism is a solemn rite that must be performed by a priest with the express consent of the ...
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The early 21st century has seen a resurgence in the performance of exorcism in the Catholic Church. Exorcism is a solemn rite that must be performed by a priest with the express consent of the bishop with jurisdiction in the area where the exorcism takes place. Both a form of healing for afflicted individuals and a discourse on evil at large in the contemporary world, exorcism lies at the intersection of therapy and cosmology in the world's largest religious institution. Its social and cultural significance is therefore worthy of analysis. This chapter takes a step in that direction through consideration of ethnographic material from exorcists, mental health professionals who assist and consult with them, and the afflicted people who seek their help.Less
The early 21st century has seen a resurgence in the performance of exorcism in the Catholic Church. Exorcism is a solemn rite that must be performed by a priest with the express consent of the bishop with jurisdiction in the area where the exorcism takes place. Both a form of healing for afflicted individuals and a discourse on evil at large in the contemporary world, exorcism lies at the intersection of therapy and cosmology in the world's largest religious institution. Its social and cultural significance is therefore worthy of analysis. This chapter takes a step in that direction through consideration of ethnographic material from exorcists, mental health professionals who assist and consult with them, and the afflicted people who seek their help.
Saida Hodžić
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780520291980
- eISBN:
- 9780520965577
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520291980.003.0005
- Subject:
- Anthropology, African Cultural Anthropology
Turning to practices of persuasion as techniques of governance, Chapter 4, Mistaken by Design: Biopolitics in Practice, examines how RHI addresses rural publics in the Upper East region. Through an ...
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Turning to practices of persuasion as techniques of governance, Chapter 4, Mistaken by Design: Biopolitics in Practice, examines how RHI addresses rural publics in the Upper East region. Through an ethnography of public health educational film screenings, I try to understand how RHI’s work is persuasive even though it eschews translation and mobilizes misrepresentations. Rather than interpreting these as indicators of a lack of knowledge or tying them to failure, I suggest that they constitute deliberate, tactical refusals of translation. Medical anthropologists tend to emphasize and critique what is said in public health and development interventions, and how it is said, but I want suggest that what is done and how power is materialized matters much more. My analysis of the place of knowledge in NGO interventions shows that NGOs like RHI know how to make knowledge matter, but also recognize that more than knowledge is needed for the production of authority. Claims about the harms of cutting become “true” when presented in visual spectacles that materialize governmental power and set the conditions and constraints on which knowledge about reproduction, health, and society is socially productive.Less
Turning to practices of persuasion as techniques of governance, Chapter 4, Mistaken by Design: Biopolitics in Practice, examines how RHI addresses rural publics in the Upper East region. Through an ethnography of public health educational film screenings, I try to understand how RHI’s work is persuasive even though it eschews translation and mobilizes misrepresentations. Rather than interpreting these as indicators of a lack of knowledge or tying them to failure, I suggest that they constitute deliberate, tactical refusals of translation. Medical anthropologists tend to emphasize and critique what is said in public health and development interventions, and how it is said, but I want suggest that what is done and how power is materialized matters much more. My analysis of the place of knowledge in NGO interventions shows that NGOs like RHI know how to make knowledge matter, but also recognize that more than knowledge is needed for the production of authority. Claims about the harms of cutting become “true” when presented in visual spectacles that materialize governmental power and set the conditions and constraints on which knowledge about reproduction, health, and society is socially productive.
T. M. Luhrmann
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780520291089
- eISBN:
- 9780520964945
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520291089.003.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Medical Anthropology
The introduction lays out what we know about the social context of schizophrenia from the epidemiological literature: that risk of schizophrenia is particularly high for immigrants from predominantly ...
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The introduction lays out what we know about the social context of schizophrenia from the epidemiological literature: that risk of schizophrenia is particularly high for immigrants from predominantly dark-skinned countries to Europe; that risk increases with lower socioeconomic status at birth and even at parent’s birth; that risk increases with urban dwelling and seems to increase the longer time is spent in cities; that risk increases as ethnic density in the neighborhood declines. The chapter presents a history of the way schizophrenia has been understood in the United States, and the diagnostic complexities of serious psychotic disorder. It then discusses what ethnographers have observed so far about the social conditions which may shape the experience of psychosis: the local cultural interpretation of mental illness; the role and presence of the family; the structure of work; and the basic social environment. This becomes the ground for our case studies.Less
The introduction lays out what we know about the social context of schizophrenia from the epidemiological literature: that risk of schizophrenia is particularly high for immigrants from predominantly dark-skinned countries to Europe; that risk increases with lower socioeconomic status at birth and even at parent’s birth; that risk increases with urban dwelling and seems to increase the longer time is spent in cities; that risk increases as ethnic density in the neighborhood declines. The chapter presents a history of the way schizophrenia has been understood in the United States, and the diagnostic complexities of serious psychotic disorder. It then discusses what ethnographers have observed so far about the social conditions which may shape the experience of psychosis: the local cultural interpretation of mental illness; the role and presence of the family; the structure of work; and the basic social environment. This becomes the ground for our case studies.
Randall Horton
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226501543
- eISBN:
- 9780226501710
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226501710.003.0014
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Anthropology, Theory and Practice
This paper examines key institutional and economic forces driving the rapid extension of the use of Western models of diagnosing and treating mental illness into all corners of the developing world. ...
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This paper examines key institutional and economic forces driving the rapid extension of the use of Western models of diagnosing and treating mental illness into all corners of the developing world. It examines the ways that problems in the American psychiatric research system, notably, ethnocentric biases and untoward economic influences, appear to be mirrored in the emerging international system, and how these may undercut the promised benefits of expanded mental health care to communities across the globe. It approaches these issues by examining the changing treatment of socio-cultural issues in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [DSM] and the International Classification of Diseases [ICD]. While identifying persisting problems in the main body of the DSM-V, the paper notes the significant progress in thinking about the socio-cultural dimensions of mental health represented in the Cultural Formulation Interview included in the appendix of the work. Drawing on research from cultural and multi-cultural psychology, cultural psychiatry, and medical anthropology, the paper maps several out possible steps for establishing more responsive and well-grounded mental health practices to serve diverse communities within the United States and across the world.Less
This paper examines key institutional and economic forces driving the rapid extension of the use of Western models of diagnosing and treating mental illness into all corners of the developing world. It examines the ways that problems in the American psychiatric research system, notably, ethnocentric biases and untoward economic influences, appear to be mirrored in the emerging international system, and how these may undercut the promised benefits of expanded mental health care to communities across the globe. It approaches these issues by examining the changing treatment of socio-cultural issues in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [DSM] and the International Classification of Diseases [ICD]. While identifying persisting problems in the main body of the DSM-V, the paper notes the significant progress in thinking about the socio-cultural dimensions of mental health represented in the Cultural Formulation Interview included in the appendix of the work. Drawing on research from cultural and multi-cultural psychology, cultural psychiatry, and medical anthropology, the paper maps several out possible steps for establishing more responsive and well-grounded mental health practices to serve diverse communities within the United States and across the world.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816674749
- eISBN:
- 9781452947341
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816674749.003.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Dominant conceptions of sleep have changed over time, and so have American understandings of the normal, the ideal, the disorderly, and pathological. These changes are the result of scientific, ...
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Dominant conceptions of sleep have changed over time, and so have American understandings of the normal, the ideal, the disorderly, and pathological. These changes are the result of scientific, medical, and popular forces: the identification of circadian rhythms that govern feelings of alertness and sleepiness, the nosological definition of various pathological forms of sleep, and commercial and media representations of sleep have all collaborated in altering how sleep is conceived. These are all changes that have occurred since the 1880s and been dependent upon social formations and cultural expectations from early colonial America through the Industrial Revolution. How Americans sleep now is tied to these historical forces and human physiology.Less
Dominant conceptions of sleep have changed over time, and so have American understandings of the normal, the ideal, the disorderly, and pathological. These changes are the result of scientific, medical, and popular forces: the identification of circadian rhythms that govern feelings of alertness and sleepiness, the nosological definition of various pathological forms of sleep, and commercial and media representations of sleep have all collaborated in altering how sleep is conceived. These are all changes that have occurred since the 1880s and been dependent upon social formations and cultural expectations from early colonial America through the Industrial Revolution. How Americans sleep now is tied to these historical forces and human physiology.
Ernesto de Martino
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780520288423
- eISBN:
- 9780520963368
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520288423.003.0003
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Anthropology, Religion
Ernesto de Martino (1908–65) could be described as one of the founding figures of Italian ethnology. Until his work was translated into English, he was fairly unknown to English-speaking ...
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Ernesto de Martino (1908–65) could be described as one of the founding figures of Italian ethnology. Until his work was translated into English, he was fairly unknown to English-speaking anthropologists. Since then, however, the importance of his contributions to the field has received wider recognition. In the book Terra del Rimorso: Contributo a una storia religiosa del Sud (The Land of Remorse: A Study of Southern Italian Tarantism), de Martino unravels how alterity may be found “at home,” through a study in the southern peninsula of Salento of rural people seasonally affected by tarantismo, a form of possession attributed to the bite of the tarantola spider.1 The affliction is cured by the performance of “choreutic” dances followed by pilgrimages and offerings made to Saint Paul. For de Martino, tarantismo is the living presence of an other-than-Catholic history—an echo of earlier pagan, erotic ritual forms. Tarantism can be understood only when placed within the context of Catholicism’s regional history, its broader social and economic conflicts, and tensions around gender, kinship, and sexuality within the home. The cult is one that the Catholic Church has “purged” but also resignified and appropriated in an effort to contain its vitality. As de Martino shows, however, the church’s engagement with the cult in the first half of the twentieth century colludes with scientific and medical—particularly psychiatric—discourses. The relevance of this work for a modern anthropology of Catholicism is plain in its historical breadth and the richness and detail of de Martino’s ethnographic research. But it is also interesting for the way it highlights how questions of science, magic, and enchantment have posed challenges of different types for the modernizing, bureaucratic church.Less
Ernesto de Martino (1908–65) could be described as one of the founding figures of Italian ethnology. Until his work was translated into English, he was fairly unknown to English-speaking anthropologists. Since then, however, the importance of his contributions to the field has received wider recognition. In the book Terra del Rimorso: Contributo a una storia religiosa del Sud (The Land of Remorse: A Study of Southern Italian Tarantism), de Martino unravels how alterity may be found “at home,” through a study in the southern peninsula of Salento of rural people seasonally affected by tarantismo, a form of possession attributed to the bite of the tarantola spider.1 The affliction is cured by the performance of “choreutic” dances followed by pilgrimages and offerings made to Saint Paul. For de Martino, tarantismo is the living presence of an other-than-Catholic history—an echo of earlier pagan, erotic ritual forms. Tarantism can be understood only when placed within the context of Catholicism’s regional history, its broader social and economic conflicts, and tensions around gender, kinship, and sexuality within the home. The cult is one that the Catholic Church has “purged” but also resignified and appropriated in an effort to contain its vitality. As de Martino shows, however, the church’s engagement with the cult in the first half of the twentieth century colludes with scientific and medical—particularly psychiatric—discourses. The relevance of this work for a modern anthropology of Catholicism is plain in its historical breadth and the richness and detail of de Martino’s ethnographic research. But it is also interesting for the way it highlights how questions of science, magic, and enchantment have posed challenges of different types for the modernizing, bureaucratic church.
Véronique Petit, Kaveri Qureshi, Yves Charbit, and Philip Kreager (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- November 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198862437
- eISBN:
- 9780191895111
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198862437.001.0001
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Development, Growth, and Environmental
This book provides an integrative framework for the anthropological demography of health, a field of interdisciplinary population research grounded in ethnography and in critical examination of the ...
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This book provides an integrative framework for the anthropological demography of health, a field of interdisciplinary population research grounded in ethnography and in critical examination of the social, political, and economic histories that have shaped relations between peoples. The field has grown from the 1990s, extending to a remarkable range of key human and policy issues, including: genetic disorders; nutrition; mental health; infant, child and maternal morbidity; malaria; HIV/AIDS; disability and chronic diseases; new reproductive technologies; and population ageing. Collaboration with social, medical, and demographic historians enables these issues to be situated in the evolution of institutional structures and inequalities that shape health and care access. Understanding fertility levels and trends has widened beyond parity and contraception to the many life course risks and alternative healing systems that shape reproductive health. By going beyond conventional demographic and epidemiological methods, and idealised macro/micro-level units, the anthropological demography of health places people’s health-seeking behaviour in a compositional demography based on ethnographic observation of group formation and change over time, and of variance between what people say and do. It tracks family and community networks; class, linguistic, and religious groups; sectoral labour and market distributions; health and healing specialisms; and relations between these bodies and with groups controlling local and national governments. The approach enables examination of how local cultures and experience are translated formally into measures on which survey and clinical programmes rely, thus testing the empirical adequacy of such translations, and leading to revision of concepts of risk and governance.Less
This book provides an integrative framework for the anthropological demography of health, a field of interdisciplinary population research grounded in ethnography and in critical examination of the social, political, and economic histories that have shaped relations between peoples. The field has grown from the 1990s, extending to a remarkable range of key human and policy issues, including: genetic disorders; nutrition; mental health; infant, child and maternal morbidity; malaria; HIV/AIDS; disability and chronic diseases; new reproductive technologies; and population ageing. Collaboration with social, medical, and demographic historians enables these issues to be situated in the evolution of institutional structures and inequalities that shape health and care access. Understanding fertility levels and trends has widened beyond parity and contraception to the many life course risks and alternative healing systems that shape reproductive health. By going beyond conventional demographic and epidemiological methods, and idealised macro/micro-level units, the anthropological demography of health places people’s health-seeking behaviour in a compositional demography based on ethnographic observation of group formation and change over time, and of variance between what people say and do. It tracks family and community networks; class, linguistic, and religious groups; sectoral labour and market distributions; health and healing specialisms; and relations between these bodies and with groups controlling local and national governments. The approach enables examination of how local cultures and experience are translated formally into measures on which survey and clinical programmes rely, thus testing the empirical adequacy of such translations, and leading to revision of concepts of risk and governance.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816674749
- eISBN:
- 9781452947341
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816674749.003.0002
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
I begin by describing the contemporary situation of sleep medicine – its rise since the 1970s and the forces behind it. I also describe the sleep clinic where I conducted my fieldwork. I argue that ...
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I begin by describing the contemporary situation of sleep medicine – its rise since the 1970s and the forces behind it. I also describe the sleep clinic where I conducted my fieldwork. I argue that the basis for sleep medicine – and American medicine generally – is not knowledge, but doubt.Less
I begin by describing the contemporary situation of sleep medicine – its rise since the 1970s and the forces behind it. I also describe the sleep clinic where I conducted my fieldwork. I argue that the basis for sleep medicine – and American medicine generally – is not knowledge, but doubt.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816674749
- eISBN:
- 9781452947341
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816674749.003.0004
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Based on the contemporary sleep clinic, I focus on the roles of doubt and certainty in medical practice, particularly in a series of cases presented by physicians to other physicians and the ...
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Based on the contemporary sleep clinic, I focus on the roles of doubt and certainty in medical practice, particularly in a series of cases presented by physicians to other physicians and the discussions that ensue, as well as media focused on the promotion of sleep as an explanatory device for understanding individual and social disorder.Less
Based on the contemporary sleep clinic, I focus on the roles of doubt and certainty in medical practice, particularly in a series of cases presented by physicians to other physicians and the discussions that ensue, as well as media focused on the promotion of sleep as an explanatory device for understanding individual and social disorder.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816674749
- eISBN:
- 9781452947341
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816674749.003.0007
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter discusses how narcolepsy has become the model for contemporary American sleep, and examines two narcolepsy drugs – Xyrem and Provigil – to show how, increasingly, Americans are being ...
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This chapter discusses how narcolepsy has become the model for contemporary American sleep, and examines two narcolepsy drugs – Xyrem and Provigil – to show how, increasingly, Americans are being driven to use chemicals to promote alertness and induce sleepiness.Less
This chapter discusses how narcolepsy has become the model for contemporary American sleep, and examines two narcolepsy drugs – Xyrem and Provigil – to show how, increasingly, Americans are being driven to use chemicals to promote alertness and induce sleepiness.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816674749
- eISBN:
- 9781452947341
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816674749.003.0010
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Counter to many expectations that we would adopt a 24 hour society, I discuss herein the ways that the American work day has remained steadfastly diurnal and the various global and local ...
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Counter to many expectations that we would adopt a 24 hour society, I discuss herein the ways that the American work day has remained steadfastly diurnal and the various global and local coordinations that have occurred to allow this – including workplace napping.Less
Counter to many expectations that we would adopt a 24 hour society, I discuss herein the ways that the American work day has remained steadfastly diurnal and the various global and local coordinations that have occurred to allow this – including workplace napping.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816674749
- eISBN:
- 9781452947341
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816674749.003.0005
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter focuses on the experiences of disordered sleepers and their families, and I present a series of cases of individuals and families who identify as specific kinds of disordered sleepers – ...
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This chapter focuses on the experiences of disordered sleepers and their families, and I present a series of cases of individuals and families who identify as specific kinds of disordered sleepers – narcoleptics, insomniacs, sleep apnics, and so on, to discuss the emergence of new desires for sleep.Less
This chapter focuses on the experiences of disordered sleepers and their families, and I present a series of cases of individuals and families who identify as specific kinds of disordered sleepers – narcoleptics, insomniacs, sleep apnics, and so on, to discuss the emergence of new desires for sleep.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816674749
- eISBN:
- 9781452947341
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816674749.003.0014
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
What compels us to want to not sleep? I introduce cases of perpetual sleeplessness to challenge this imagined posthuman future of sleep, attempts to break records to stay awake, science fictional ...
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What compels us to want to not sleep? I introduce cases of perpetual sleeplessness to challenge this imagined posthuman future of sleep, attempts to break records to stay awake, science fictional representations of experiments to eradicate sleep, and scientific attempts to reduce or dramatically alter our sleep.Less
What compels us to want to not sleep? I introduce cases of perpetual sleeplessness to challenge this imagined posthuman future of sleep, attempts to break records to stay awake, science fictional representations of experiments to eradicate sleep, and scientific attempts to reduce or dramatically alter our sleep.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816674749
- eISBN:
- 9781452947341
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816674749.003.0011
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter focuses on contemporary politics around time and its use in American society; I focus primarily on the Take Back Your Time movement and the rearrangement of school start times to allow ...
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This chapter focuses on contemporary politics around time and its use in American society; I focus primarily on the Take Back Your Time movement and the rearrangement of school start times to allow students to get more sleep throughout the school week.Less
This chapter focuses on contemporary politics around time and its use in American society; I focus primarily on the Take Back Your Time movement and the rearrangement of school start times to allow students to get more sleep throughout the school week.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816674749
- eISBN:
- 9781452947341
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816674749.003.0012
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter traces the history of the use of the sleepwalking defense in the U.S. and its roots in conceptions of desire and nature. I follow this discussion by focusing on the invention of drowsy ...
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This chapter traces the history of the use of the sleepwalking defense in the U.S. and its roots in conceptions of desire and nature. I follow this discussion by focusing on the invention of drowsy driving laws at the turn of the 21st century, laws that explicitly recognize the effects associated with ongoing sleep deprivation.Less
This chapter traces the history of the use of the sleepwalking defense in the U.S. and its roots in conceptions of desire and nature. I follow this discussion by focusing on the invention of drowsy driving laws at the turn of the 21st century, laws that explicitly recognize the effects associated with ongoing sleep deprivation.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816674749
- eISBN:
- 9781452947341
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816674749.003.0013
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter takes the concerns of how sleep makes us human into stranger realms – extreme sports, military research, and adventurous science. At once, the very basis of sleep is being tested in ...
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This chapter takes the concerns of how sleep makes us human into stranger realms – extreme sports, military research, and adventurous science. At once, the very basis of sleep is being tested in these situations, while sleep’s potentialities are being isolated.Less
This chapter takes the concerns of how sleep makes us human into stranger realms – extreme sports, military research, and adventurous science. At once, the very basis of sleep is being tested in these situations, while sleep’s potentialities are being isolated.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816674749
- eISBN:
- 9781452947341
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816674749.003.0003
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
I trace discussions of sleep from early colonial America through the scientific efforts in the first half of the 20th century, focused on American idioms of sleep – which highlight concerns with ...
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I trace discussions of sleep from early colonial America through the scientific efforts in the first half of the 20th century, focused on American idioms of sleep – which highlight concerns with efficiency and productivity. That sleep is known through its metaphors compounds the doubts that motivate clinical practice.Less
I trace discussions of sleep from early colonial America through the scientific efforts in the first half of the 20th century, focused on American idioms of sleep – which highlight concerns with efficiency and productivity. That sleep is known through its metaphors compounds the doubts that motivate clinical practice.