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The Social Pathologies of Contemporary Civilization


About the Series

Breaking decisively with the often ideological and moralistic approach of treating problems of health and well-being as discrete and individual problems to be addressed in isolation both from one another and their broader social contexts, this series pursues the investigation of the ways in which contemporary malaises, diseases, illnesses and psychosomatic syndromes are related to cultural pathologies of the social body and disorders of the collective ésprit de corps of contemporary society. It avoids reductive psychological and biomedical understandings of pathologies - including depression, stress-related illnesses, eating disorders, suicide and deliberate self-harm - to focus instead on the socio-cultural contexts in which they occur, examining the radical changes to social structures and institutions, and the deep crises in our civilization as a whole to which such conditions are connected. The Social Pathologies of Contemporary Civilization thus welcomes manuscripts from a broad range of disciplinary perspectives across the humanities and social sciences - sociology, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, politics, economics and cultural studies, as well as from the fields of medicine social care, therapeutic practice and the healing arts - that explore the fruitfulness locating health and well-being not simply in the individual body or soul, but within a trans-disciplinary imagination that takes into account the integral human person’s situatedness within collective social bodies, particular communities, entire societies, or even whole civilizations.

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Empty Suffering A Social Phenomenology of Depression, Anxiety and Addiction

Empty Suffering: A Social Phenomenology of Depression, Anxiety and Addiction

1st Edition

By Domonkos Sik
September 25, 2023

Interdisciplinary in approach, this book combines philosophy, sociology, history and psychology in the analysis of contemporary forms of suffering. With attention to depression, anxiety, chronic pain and addiction, it examines both particular forms of suffering and takes a broad view of their ...

States of Intoxication The Place of Alcohol in Civilisation

States of Intoxication: The Place of Alcohol in Civilisation

1st Edition

By John O'Brien
October 17, 2019

This book provides an illuminating perspective on alcohol use, drawing on approaches from both anthropological research and historical sociology to examine our ambivalent attitudes to alcohol in the modern West. From anthropological research on non-Western, non-modern cultures, the author ...

Healing Rites of Passage Salutogenesis in Serious Fun Camps

Healing Rites of Passage: Salutogenesis in Serious Fun Camps

1st Edition

By Peter James Kearney
October 01, 2018

This book examines how ‘Therapeutic Recreation’ transforms the social health of children enduring or recovering from life-threatening illnesses such as cancer and leukaemia. With studies drawn from ‘Serious Fun’ projects in the USA, the UK, France, Ireland and Israel, the author explores how camp ...

Late Modern Subjectivity and its Discontents Anxiety, Depression and Alzheimer’s Disease

Late Modern Subjectivity and its Discontents: Anxiety, Depression and Alzheimer’s Disease

1st Edition

By Kieran Keohane, Anders Petersen, Bert van den Bergh
August 14, 2018

 This book analyses three of the most prevalent illnesses of late modernity: anxiety, depression and Alzheimer’s disease, in terms of their relation to cultural pathologies of the social body. Usually these conditions are interpreted clinically in terms of individualized symptoms and responded...

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