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- Convenor:
-
Justyna Straczuk
(Institute of Philosophy and Sociology Polish Academy of Sciences)
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- Track:
- The World of the Mind and the Mind in the World
- Location:
- Roscoe Theatre A
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 7 August, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The panel will explore different relations of suffering and emotions as they are experienced and expressed by both the suffering subjects and their observers.
Long Abstract:
Studying both our own emotions and those of others has been an important topic of anthropological scholarship in the last decades. Nonetheless, comparative research on various experiences and expressions of suffering as emotions and their relation to emotions remains yet underdeveloped. The panel welcomes empirically and ethnographically based papers that address a wide range of entanglements and constellations of suffering and/as emotion(s) in current societies worldwide. In this respect its aim is to illuminate the interplay between individual experiences and cultural schemes/norms/scripts; the body and cultural expression; the universal and the individual and/or culturally constructed. In particular, the panel is interested in analyzing emotions of a suffering subject and/vs. emotions of observers in relation to two important phenomena: medicalization and/or media appropriation/seizure of suffering. By utilizing rational-technical language in diagnosing and handling suffering, the former erases it from social life. By manipulating and directing certain forms of suffering in media coverage, the latter erodes or disables empathy for the sufferer.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 7 August, 2013, -Arthur Murphy (The University of North Carolina at Greensboro) Eric Jones (University of North Carolina Greensboro) Jennifer Hill (University of North Carolina at Greensboro)
Paper short abstract:
This paper presents result of 15 years of research on stress and trauma in Mexico, Ecuador and the United States. We compare reactions to extreme events between the three countries and between Latino and non-Latino victims
Paper long abstract:
In 1997, a team of social anthropologists began working with a team of community psychologists to investigate the nature and incidence of stress and trauma in Mexico and how stress and trauma compare to Mexican-American and other Latino populations in the United States of America. Between 1998 and 2000, the team carried out the first epidemiological study of stress in urban Mexico using four major cities. Subsequently, we have carried out studies of post-disaster stress, trauma and recovery after Hurricane Paulina (Acapulco, Mexico), flooding and landslides (Teziutlan, Puebla and Villahermosa, Tabasco, Mexico), volcanic eruptions (Ecuador) and fire (Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico). The paper will explore the epidemiological findings from the national study; compare those as well as recovery data to comparable data from the United States. The goal is to understand how stress and trauma manifest themselves in Latino, Latin American, and non-Hispanic populations. We have found differences in the levels of violence and trauma experienced by "normal" populations when compared to US populations as well as differences in the trajectory of recovery between the USA, Mexico and Ecuador as well as between subcultures in Mexico and Ecuador. Similarities include similar conceptualizations of post-traumatic stress, while differences include different expectations regarding expected support from informal networks. In the process the paper will explore how social anthropology has interfaced with community psychology in an effort to develop an understanding of the cross-cultural nature of stress and trauma.
Andrzej Perzanowski (University of Warsaw)
Paper short abstract:
The aim of this paper is anthropological analysis of moral and emotional aspects of extrainstitutional/family care of severely mentally ill patients in Poland. The intellectual foundation for this practice is self-conscious psychiatric disourse focused on the critique of closed institutions, such as vast psychiatric hospitals. Not only do they create hostile or pathological environment, but also and most importantly – they are a source of unnecessary suffering of the isolated individuals.
Paper long abstract:
Since the end of the 19. century in certain psychiatric hospitals in Poland, as well as in some other European countries, there has been developed a kind of therapy usually called family care for the chronically mentally ill. It involved entrusting patients diagnosed with chronic mental illnesses to the care of chosen families living in the vicinity of the hospital, unrelated to the patient.
This practice has been based on diverse premises, of which economic factors are not the least important, but for which the central reason is a moral one: the perception of the psychiatric hospital as an environment fundamentally harmful for patients. Anthropological analysis of psychiatric discourse (scientific papers, medical diagnoses, opinions of practicing psychiatrists) reveals deeply critical attitudes towards closed institutions and their effects on the health of chronically ill patients, based on the conviction that long-term isolation causes suffering, which is not justified by the requirements of therapy. Family care, as well as community care, is considered a better way to ensure dignity, provide emotional support and ease the suffering of patients.
Psychiatric practice is premised on knowledge gained in the process of family and community care therapy, which includes analyses of social perception of mental illness and its effect on health and wellbeing of patients.
The paper is based on analysis of psychiatric discourse and on ethnographic research in eastern Poland.