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Adam Frank is Professor in the Department of English Language and Literatures at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of Transferential Poetics, from Poe to Warhol (Fordham University Press, 2015), co-author (with Elizabeth Wilson) of A Silvan Tomkins Handbook (University of Minnesota Press, 2020), and co-editor (with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick) of Shame and Its Sisters: A Silvan Tomkins Reader (Duke University Press, 1995). His essays have appeared in ELH, Criticism, Critical Inquiry, Science in Context, and elsewhere. He recently completed a sabbatical year fellowship at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study (2018-2019) where he pursued the Radio Free Stein critical sound project (www.radiofreestein.com).

Social theory has much to gain from taking up the challenges of conceptualizing ‘mental health’. Such an approach to the stunting of human mental life in conditions of adversity requires us to open up the black box of ‘environment’, and to develop a vitalist biosocial science, informed by and in conversation with the life sciences and the neurosciences. In this paper we draw on both classical and contemporary social theory to begin this task. We explore human inhabitation – how humans inhabit their ‘ecological niches’ – and examine a number of conceptual developments that ‘deconstruct’ the binary distinction between organism and environment. We argue that we must understand the neurological, ecological and social pathways and mechanisms that shape human (mental) life if we are to address the central concerns of our discipline with inequity and injustice as these are inscribed into the bodies and souls of human beings.

It is a common trope that, during its decades of emergence in the early twentieth century, American poetic Modernism waged a concerted war against the rhetorical nature of poetic language. Imagism has often been seen as the command centre of this anti-rhetorical campaign, with such martial figures as Ezra Pound and T.E. Hulme as its commanders in chief. We must note, however, that both Pound and Hulme mean the term “rhetoric” in a very specific sense. The rhetoric they denounce is neither tha...

Background There are very few close-up sociological or anthropological data informing epidemiological and psychiatric research design and/or contributing to our understanding of the relationship between mental health and specific forms of urban life. Furthermore, research on the relationships between urbanicity and mental disorder has paid little attention to the global diversity of urban experience, such as in cities in China, India and Brazil. Methods Two innovative methods can be employed to unveil the diversified urban experience of migrants in China, i.e. an ethnography-informed sociological deep surveying instrument and an ecological momentary assessment with a smartphone app. This article introduces the design and pilot survey of these new instruments towards a ‘mechanism-rich’ epidemiology. Results The ethnography-informed survey instrument enabled us to include some of the issues from the ethnography and successfully ‘dig deeper’ into respondents’ social experience. The pilot of the smartphone app serves as ‘proof of principle’ that we can recruit respondents in Shanghai, and that we can receive and use the data. Conclusions Both of these pilots have demonstrated good feasibility for studying mobility, urban life and mental health. Our next steps will be to extend the Shanghai sample, to use the app in Sao Paulo and Toronto and then hopefully in India and Africa.

Riparian ecosystems provide critical habitat for many species, yet assessment of vegetation condition at local scales is difficult to measure when considering large areas over long time periods. We present a framework to map and monitor two deciduous cover types, upland and riparian, occupying a small fraction of an expansive, mountainous landscape in north-central Wyoming. Initially, we developed broad-scale predictions of predominant woody vegetation types by integrating Landsat data into species distribution models and combining subsequent outputs into a synthesis map. Then, we evaluated a 35-year Landsat time series (1985–2019) using the Mann-Kendall test to identify significant trends in the condition of upland and riparian deciduous vegetation and assessed the rate and direction of change using the Theil-Sen estimator. Finally, we used plot level data to assess the utility of the framework to detect bottom-up controls (ungulate browse pressure and management actions) on vegetation condition. The synthesis map had an overall correct classification rate of 87% and field data indicated deciduous vegetation within 45 m of coniferous forest faces increased pressure of conifer expansion. The trend assessment identified consistent patterns operating at the landscape scale across both upland and riparian deciduous vegetation; a predominant greening trend was observed for 12 years followed by a 9-year browning trend, before switching back to a greening trend for the last 13 years of the study. Our results indicate trends are driven by the climate of the measurement period at the landscape scale. Although we did not find conclusive evidence to establish a strong link between browse pressure and satellite data, we highlight examples where prevailing trends can be overridden by local disturbance or management intervention. This framework is transferable to other understudied riparian environments throughout western North America to provide insight on ecohydrological processes and assess global and local stressors across broad spatiotemporal scales.

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This paper examines the way in which sociology and biology continue to struggle to understand why urban life creates high levels of mental disorder. The movement of the world population to be majority urban in recent years adds urgency to this issue. The paper addresses ways in which sociological analysis and biological analysis might work together through the identification of mechanisms, imagined and confirmed through data, of the way in which urban life gets ‘under the skin’. The argument moves from the use of mechanisms in scientific explanation, to the shortcomings of epidemiology, and the possibility of a new ‘mechanism-rich’ epidemiology. It then discusses seven examples of work that might contribute to this effort, concluding that more careful ethnography is required.

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We argue that predictions of a ‘tsunami’ of mental health problems as a consequence of the pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and the lockdown are overstated; feelings of anxiety and sadness are entirely normal reactions to difficult circumstances, not symptoms of poor mental health. Some people will need specialised mental health support, especially those already leading tough lives; we need immediate reversal of years of underfunding of community mental health services. However, the disproportionate effects of COVID-19 on the most disadvantaged, especially BAME people placed at risk by their social and economic conditions, were entirely predictable. Mental health is best ensured by urgently rebuilding the social and economic supports stripped away over the last decade. Governments must pump funds into local authorities to rebuild community services, peer support, mutual aid and local community and voluntary sector organisations. Health care organisations must tackle racism and discrimination to ensure genuine equal access to universal health care. Government must replace highly conditional benefit systems by something like a universal basic income. All economic and social policies must be subjected to a legally binding mental health audit. This may sound unfeasibly expensive, but the social and economic costs, not to mention the costs in personal and community suffering, though often invisible, are far greater.

Capoeira could be defined as a Brazilian martial art and game to be played. This research explored how capoeira play might be considered to facilitate connectedness amongst newly-recruited persons, plus any other ramifications of capoeira involvement. A beginners' course of capoeira was provided to participants, free of charge, in an English city in the West Midlands — new capoeiristas in a new venue for capoeira. Researchers attended classes to collect/construct overt non-participant observation data. In addition, semi-structured interviews were undertaken with the new capoeiristas post-course. This article explores researchers' observation fieldnotes and interviewees' narratives. These qualitative data-driven debates include the concepts: self, identity, escapism, multiparty endeavour, community, temporality, enjoyment, and transcending boundaries. Capoeira is theorised in a fresh manner that highlights social benefits of capoeira – for example as an enjoyable and supportive group endeavour which includes elements of social play and community-building – plus benefits for self that can transcend the boundaries of the class. Findings highlight how capoeira can be considered an inherently multiparty endeavour whereby social actors form, and experience, a community in order to embrace capoeira play. Data suggest capoeira can facilitate group playfulness, joviality, and laughter. Further, capoeiristas can enact and experience – some mode of – escapism via capoeira, whereby new place and pursuit can facilitate hedonistic diversion from the mundane. Capoeira appears to provide adventure and liberation into a relatively unburdened part of, or place in, social life. Corporeal and discursive boundary-empowerment can also be experienced by capoeiristas, fostering positive identity work in the wider world. Capoeira can be argued to facilitate mutuality (e.g., community experience and group work) and egoism (e.g., an individual’s identity work) concurrently. This research suggests that modified capoeira for beginners can be beneficial for both the new capoeiristas themselves and for positive community action during and beyond class

International audience; The consumption and conception of psychotropes in American culture has often been at the crux of a social and aesthetic struggle, torn between values of rebellion and limitation, subjective liberty and addicted enslavement, iconoclasm and structuring social norms. This issue interrogates the notion of psychotropic affect and states across an American culture and literature historically conditioned by a range of counter movements of limitation and control. It explores a range of issues, with contributions on: alcohol in antebellum American culture, opium dens in the nineteenth century, the addiction to thought in Emerson, LSD and viruses in Burroughs and Huxley, psilocybin mushrooms and Native American imagery in 1950s media, Cold War paranoia as a psychotropic state, as well as language as intoxication in David Foster Wallace. Contributors: Lindsey Banco, Sylvie Bauer, Irène Delcourt, Yves Gardes, Scott Martin, Pierre-Louis Patoine, Stephen Siff.

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Cet article envisage la question de l’émotion littéraire et analyse les malentendus et les mythes qui entourent les différents modèles de l’affect., This article considers the question of literary emotion and analyzes the misunderstandings and myths that surround the different models of affect.

Based on the 'genealogies' workpackage of the AHRC funded 'Creative Practice as Mutual Recovery' The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link. The notion of recovery has become prominent in mental health care discourse in the UK, but it is often considered as if it were a relatively novel notion, and as if it represented an alternative to conventional treatment and intervention. In this paper we explore some of the origins of the notion of recovery in the early 20th century in movements such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Recovery Inc. Whilst these phenomena are not entirely continuous with recovery in the present day, some important antecedents of the contemporary notion can be detected. These include the focus on the sufferers’ interior space as a key theatre of operations and the reinforcement and consolidation of medical ways of seeing the condition without any immediate medical supervision of the actors being necessary. This has resonance with many contemporary examples of recovery in practice where the art of living with a mental health condition is emphasised without the nature of the psychopathological condition itself being challenged.

Contents: Background: Russia in context, Nick Manning and Nataliya Tikhonova. Poverty: Poverty, incomes and resources - concepts and measures, John Veit-Wilson, Poverty in Russia, Nadia Davidova. Social Exclusion: Social exclusion: concepts and debates, Peter Abrahamson Social exclusion in Russia, Nataliya Tikhonova. Special Issues in the Study of Poverty and Social Exclusion: Special issues in the study of poverty and social exclusion: Part 1: ethnic and cultural aspects of poverty, Andrei Zdravomyslov and Artur Tsutsiev. Part 2: gender, poverty and social exclusion, Nadia Davidova and Nataliya Tikhonova. Appendix 1: project methodology, Nadia Davidova Appendix 2: histories of 19 households, Nataliya Tikhonova Bibliography Index.

In an increasingly stimulated and stimulating modernity, is it only the bored mind which is truly free? Does boredom constitute a fundamental dissolution of the distracted modern subject, in an unp...

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Contents: Preface Social policy and the health crisis in the new Russia, Nadia Davidova, Nick Manning, Hannele Palosuo and Meri Koivusalo. Part I Health Beliefs in the New Russia: Measuring the population's health, Nataliya Tikhonova Understanding health, Svetlana Goryunova and Nataliya Tikhonova. Part II Health and Social Structure: Inequalities and health, Nataliya Tikhonova Poverty in post-reform Russia, Nadia Davidova Poverty and health: the longitudinal experience, Nadia Davidova Health and employment, Inna Nazarova. Part III Health and Social Action: Access to health care and self-care, Inna Nazarova Health behaviour, Irina Popova Gender, health and poverty, Irina Popova Life stories in 10 Russian households: the sequence of events over 10 years of reform, Nadia Davidova ( with linking material by Karen George) Appendix Bibliography Index.

How did the criterion of poetic sincerity transform, in the space of a half-century, from a fundamental tenet of radical modernism to an incarnation of lyrical and expressive orthodoxy? Why have efforts to reintegrate sincerity into experimental poetics and literary traditions—such as the problematic New Sincerity of the 1990s—met with limited success? Continuing a reflection begun in my study Rhétorique de la sincérité, I suggest that this disconnect between innovative American poetics and the criterion of sincerity may be traced back to the fundamentally wrongheaded association between sincerity and expression. Reintegrating sincerity into innovative contemporary verse seems possible not by creating a new form of “sincere” expression, but by distancing sincerity from the notion of expressivity altogether. Comment le critère de la sincérité poétique s’est-il transformé en un demi-siècle ? Principe fondamental du modernisme radical, comment en est-il venu à incarner l’orthodoxie lyrique et expressive ? Pourquoi les efforts visant à réintégrer la sincérité dans les poétiques et traditions de l’avant-garde – tel le mouvement problématique de la New Sincerity des années 1990 – ont-ils rencontré un succès limité ? Poursuivant la réflexion entamée dans Rhétorique de la sincérité, je suggère ici que pour comprendre la rupture entre la poétique américaine innovante et le critère de la sincérité, il est bon de reconsidérer l’association, mal fondée, entre la sincérité et l’expression. Si réintégrer la sincérité dans la poétique contemporaine est possible, ce n’est pas en créant une nouvelle forme d’expression « sincère », mais en distinguant la sincérité de la notion d’expressivité elle-même.

A major programme of health reform was announced in 2009. China is growing fast, and is beginning to engage with the international social policy community to discuss and review the consequences of rapid industrialization. As a specific part of social policy, health policy shares some of the characteristics of a policy area driven by the consequences of industrialization, but it also has its own particular features. This article reviews the general relationship between state and citizens in the health field by way of an introduction before focussing more specifically on Chinese patterns of health inequalities, and the pressures for reform. The 2009 reform of health policy and its dynamics are then presented, and the article concludes that there has been a deterioration in Chinese health policy, which threatens to undermine the benefits of economic growth for Chinese people.

In this article, a sociological analysis of the DSM, particularly axis II, is presented. Every discipline poses its own questions and answers them with its own particular methods. In this case, the distinction is drawn between an analysis that examines the DSM from the outside as an object of study and an analysis that examines the DSM from the inside, which attempts to serve the interests of the professional work being studied. This article takes the former approach, and the DSM is analysed in relation to the general problems of classification systems, the diffusion of innovations and the effects of social context. The conclusion reached is that the DSM has been very substantially shaped by external influences. This is consistent with the general dissatisfaction felt in both the clinical and research fields with the performance of axis II definitions of personality disorder. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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This paper considers what we might expect to be the effect on social policy of Turkish accession to the EU by reviewing the impact of EU membership on social policy in other new member and candidate countries. This effect begins long before membership is finalised, and continues long after membership has been achieved. The patterns of impact can be divided along a number of dimensions: between ‘accession’ and ‘enlargement’; state and civil society; centre and periphery; formal and substantive; and different welfare institutions. In the course of reviewing these variations, the paper reflects upon the nature of social policy itself, and in particular the nature of the European Social Model.

Our understanding of US social policy has not been advanced by the classification of welfare states that has dominated social policy analysis in recent years. But in biology and cosmology we can find useful examples of the way in which we can develop more theoretically informed and dynamic classifications. A common feature has been the incorporation of time and developmental paths into classification. The way in which social and political developments unfold over time is particularly important in social policy and, in the case of the USA, this has enabled us to understand that social policies can and have changed, with a rich mix of progressive and regressive policies evolving and receding over the decades. In view of the dominance of the USA in world affairs and the global transfer of resources, ideas and polices across regions, this more subtle analysis of the nature of US social policy is essential.

In 2004 eight Central and East European countries are joining the EU. This article explores the changes that have overtaken those countries since the 1989 transition from communism. It begins with a note on the alternative sources of data that might be used, and the difficulties of arriving at a summary of the nature of social policy development and the social conditions that have evolved in the countries. It then presents an analysis of the broad changes across the whole region, now comprising 27 countries, the common phases of change they have shared, and the way that they have diversified into some countries that are already close to the circumstances of existing EU members and some which are in a desperately disintegrated state. The main part of the article presents data on public expenditure, social policies, and social conditions that can be found in the eight new members, and discerns the common and divergent patterns of change that can be found. In the conclusion, issues of path dependency, diversity, and Europeanization are considered. The prospects for the eight new EU members are summarized, and a judgement is made that there are grounds for optimism in their future capacity to sustain social solidarity through social protection and support.