ANTH 1722 - CULTURE AND POLITICS OF MENTAL HEALTH
Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
Long Description Are emotions universal, or are they culturally specific? Are talk therapies, medications, and diagnostic categories effective in the same ways cross-culturally? How does psychological knowledge intersect with power and capital? How, for instance, are some qualities made to seem “healthier” than others? Can affective disorders be explained via a clear biological marker, or are they the result of ways of seeing (or being seen)? What difference does that distinction make to people who provide mental healthcare, and those living under the description of disorder? At their core such questions are fundamentally anthropological, touching on topics of person-hood, identity, subjectivity, medical authority, and power, to name a few. This course explores these topics by exploring several ways in which anthropology has intersected with “the psychological.” Those include studies that have sought to add anthropological depth to a psychological accounting of the human; studies that have interrogated the “psy-ences” as a social institution enmeshed in relations of power; and studies exploring the biomedicalization of mental health. The goal is to gain not only an appreciation of the rich diversity of human experience, but also a critical understanding of how our feelings and senses of well-being are structured by forces beyond ourselves. Who am I? What do I feel? How might I feel more normal? What is “normal”? As the authors explored in this course demonstrate, these questions are as much personal as cultural and political.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: LG/SNC Elective Basis
Course Attributes: DSAS Social Science General Ed. Requirement, SCI Polymathic Contexts: Soc/Behav. GE. Req.
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