Prozak Diaries

Prozak Diaries is an analysis of emerging psychiatric discourses in post-1980s Iran. It examines a cultural shift in how people interpret and express their feeling states, by adopting the language of psychiatry, and shows how experiences that were once articulated in the richly layered poetics of the Persian language became, by the 1990s, part of a clinical discourse on mood and affect. In asking how psychiatric dialect becomes a language of everyday, the book analyzes cultural forms created by this clinical discourse, exploring individual, professional, and generational cultures of medicalization in various sites from clinical encounters and psychiatric training, to intimate interviews, works of art and media, and Persian blogs. Through the lens of psychiatry, the book reveals how historical experiences are negotiated and how generations are formed. Orkideh Behrouzan traces the historical circumstances that prompted the development of psychiatric discourses in Iran and reveals the ways in which they both reflect and actively shape Iranians' cultural sensibilities. A physician and an anthropologist, she combines clinical and anthropological perspectives in order to investigate the gray areas between memory and everyday life, between individual symptoms and generational remembering. Prozak Diaries offers an exploration of language as experience. In interpreting clinical and generational narratives, Behrouzan writes not only a history of psychiatry in contemporary Iran, but a story of how stories are told.

Offers new and cutting-edge research on the role of drugs in Iranian society and government. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

This original, field-changing collection explores the plasticity and unfinishedness of human subjects and lifeworlds, advancing the conceptual terrain of an anthropology of becoming. People's becomings trouble and exceed ways of knowing and acting, producing new possibilities for research, methodology, and writing. The contributors creatively bridge ethnography and critical theory in a range of worlds on the edge, from war and its aftermath, economic transformation, racial inequality, and gun violence to religiosity, therapeutic markets, animal rights activism, and abrupt environmental change. Defying totalizing analytical schemes, these visionary essays articulate a human science of the uncertain and unknown and restore a sense of movement and possibility to ethics and political practice. Unfinished invites readers to consider the array of affects, ideas, forces, and objects that shape contemporary modes of existence and future horizons, opening new channels for critical thought and creative expression. Contributors. Lucas Bessire, João Biehl, Naisargi N. Dave, Elizabeth A. Davis, Michael M. J. Fischer, Angela Garcia, Peter Locke, Adriana Petryna, Bridget Purcell, Laurence Ralph, Lilia M. Schwarcz

Using the influential and field-changing Writing Culture as a point of departure, the thirteen essays in Writing Culture and the Life of Anthropology address anthropology's past, present, and future. The contributors, all leading figures in anthropology today, reflect back on the "writing culture" movement of the 1980s, consider its influences on ethnographic research and writing, and debate what counts as ethnography in a post-Writing Culture era. They address questions of ethnographic method, new forms the presentation of research might take, and the anthropologist's role. Exploring themes such as late industrialism, precarity, violence, science and technology, globalization, and the non-human world, this book is essential reading for those looking to understand the current state of anthropology and its possibilities going forward. Contributors. Anne Allison, James Clifford, Michael M.J. Fischer, Kim Fortun, Richard Handler, John L. Jackson, Jr., George E. Marcus, Charles Piot, Hugh Raffles, Danilyn Rutherford, Orin Starn, Kathleen Stewart, Michael Taussig, Kamala Visweswaran

Oaxaca is known for many things--its indigenous groups, archaeological sites, crafts, and textiles--but not for mental health care. When one talks with Oaxacans about mental health, most say it's a taboo topic and that people there think you "have to be crazy to go to a psychologist." Yet throughout Oaxaca are signs advertising the services of psicólogos; there are prominent conferences of mental health professionals; and self-help groups like Neurotics Anonymous thrive, where participants rise to say, "Hola, mi nombre es Raquel, y soy neurótica." How does one explain the recent growth of Euroamerican-style therapies in the region? Author Whitney L. Duncan analyzes this phenomenon of "psy-globalization" and develops a rich ethnography of its effects on Oaxacans' understandings of themselves and their emotions, ultimately showing how globalizing forms of care are transformative for and transformed by the local context. She also delves into the mental health impacts of migration from Mexico to the United States, both for migrants who return and for the family members they leave behind. This book is a recipient of the Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Prize from Vanderbilt University Press for the best book in the area of medicine.

In Precarious Lives, Shahram Khosravi attempts to reconcile the paradoxes of Iranians' everyday life in the first decade of the twenty-first century. On the one hand, multiple circumstances of precarity give rise to a sense of hopelessness, shared visions of a futureless tomorrow, widespread home(land)lessness, intense individualism, and a growth of incivilities. On the other, daydreaming and hope, as well as civility and solidarity in political protests, street carnivals, and social movements, continue to persist. Young Iranians describe themselves as being stuck in purposelessness and forced to endure endless waiting, and they are also aware that they are perceived as unproductive and a burden on their society. Despite the aspirations and inspiration they possess, they find themselves forced into petrifying social and spatial immobility. Uncertainty in the present, a seemingly futureless tomorrow: these are the circumstances that Khosravi explores in Precarious Lives. Creating an intricate and moving portrait of contemporary Iranian life, Khosravi weaves together individual stories, government reports, statistics, and cultural analysis of art and literature to depict how Iranians react to the experience of precarity and the possibility of hope. Drawing on extensive ethnographic engagement with youth in Tehran and Isfahan as well as with migrant workers in rural areas, Khosravi examines the complexities and contradictions of everyday life in Iran. Precarious Lives is a vital work of contemporary anthropology that serves as a testament to the shared hardship and hope of the Iranian people.

Revered former Metal Maniacs editor Jeff Wagner analyses the heady side of metal in this exhaustive narrative history of a relentlessly ambitious musical subculture. Beginning with the hugely influential mid-1970s efforts of progressive rock acts Rush and King Crimson, Wagner unfurls a vast colourful tapestry of sounds and styles, from the 'Big 3' of Queensryche, Fates Warning and Dream Theater to the extreme prog pioneers Voivod, Watchtower, Celtic Frost and others.

Depression has colonized the world. Today, more than 300 million of us have been diagnosed as depressed. But 150 years ago, "depression" referred to a mood, not a sickness. Does that mean people weren't sick before, only sad? Of course not. Mental illness is a complex thing, part biological, part social, its definition dependent on time and place. But in the mid-twentieth century, even as European empires were crumbling, new Western clinical models and treatments for mental health spread across the world. In so doing, "depression" began to displace older ideas like "melancholia," the Japanese "utsushô," or the Punjabi "sinking heart" syndrome. Award-winning historian Jonathan Sadowsky tells this global story, chronicling the path-breaking work of psychiatrists and pharmacists, and the intimate sufferings of patients. Revealing the continuity of human distress across time and place, he shows us how different cultures have experienced intense mental anguish, and how they have tried to alleviate it. He reaches an unflinching conclusion: the devastating effects of depression are real. A number of treatments do reduce suffering, but a permanent cure remains elusive. Throughout the history of depression, there have been overzealous promoters of particular approaches, but history shows us that there is no single way to get better that works for everyone. Like successful psychotherapy, history can liberate us from the negative patterns of the past.