On the Social Constructionist Approach to Traumatized Selves in Post-disaster Settings: State-Induced Violence in Nandigram, India

Abstract

Through the use of concepts such as traumatization and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the distressing experiences of survivors are understood in psychology and psychiatry primarily as the behavioural symptoms resulting supposedly from an incomplete emotional and cognitive processing of traumatic events. Due to such an exclusive focus on the intra-psychic processes, besides the survivors' healing facilitated by cultural beliefs and symbols, their trauma-related distress associated with the cultural interpretation of loss is also generally ignored. This paper illustrates the utility of the social constructionist paradigm in understanding the survivors' experiences of suffering and healing within the cultural and socio-political context of violence through an ethnographic study among the poor farmers of Nandigram, India, inflicted by violence from the state government as it tried to forcibly acquire their land to build a chemical factory. How the traumatized selves experience intense distress resulting from disruptions to a sense of wholeness and how this wholeness may be reformulated through culturally valued beliefs are highlighted in the themes of suffering ('experience of PTSD symptoms', 'betrayed self', 'overwhelmed by loss', and 'biographical disruption') and healing ('moral re-affirmation', 'sense of togetherness', 'sense of security due to change in political environment') presented in the vignettes.

Decolonizing culture: Euro-American psychology and the shaping of neoliberal selves in India

“…Medical professionals and social scientists such as Lewis-Fernandez and Kleinman (1994), Cassell (2004Cassell ( , 2013, and Priya (2012aPriya ( , 2012bPriya ( , 2015, for example, have shown how the concept of well-being and mental health is intricately shaped by the cultural meanings of selfhood as well as socio-political processes that may pose a threat to one's coherence of selfhood. The ways in which neoliberal understanding of identity shapes concepts of mental health and well-being requires further analysis and study.…”

“…Neoliberal conceptions of mental health are also being extended to the Indian social realm. Priya (2004Priya ( , 2012bPriya ( , 2015 and Viswambharan and Priya (2016) have conducted extensive qualitative studies on the mental health of the survivors of natural disasters and political and religious violence in the Gujarat and West Bengal states of India. The mental health intervention for the victims of traumatic events revolved around the treatment of institutionalized psychiatric disorders based on a Euro-American taxonomy rather than addressing the socio-politically induced distress and causes of collective trauma that were experienced by the community.…”

“…This land grab was driven by what he calls "accumulation by encroachment" wherein public lands were being converted into private goods for the betterment of the corporate elite (Patnaik, 2007(Patnaik, , p. 1893. In the aftermath of this crisis, Priya (2015) conducted ethnographic research and interviewed the survivors who experienced political violence in Nandigram to further understand how they were coming to terms with prolonged periods of social suffering and alienation. Priya (2015) reported the following categories of suffering through a constructionist grounded theory analysis of the ethnographic narratives of the survivors who either lost their family members in the violence or underwent torture themselves at the hands of perpetrators.…”

“…Kleinman, Das, and Lock (1998) have defined social suffering as "human problems that have their origins and consequences in the devastating injuries that social force can inflict on human experience" (p. ix). Similarly, Priya's (2015) analysis of the experiences of suffering of the farmers of Nandigram, who had to face the brunt of displacement due to the state government's plan to build SEZ in their villages, shows how neoliberal policies pose a threat to relational being, communal harmony, and their traditional means of livelihood.…”

Revisiting the Paradigm Shift in Trauma Studies: Twenty-Five Years of Veena Das’ ‘Our Work to Cry: Your Work to Listen’

“…This humanising approach (as it reflects and tends to foreground the voice and dignity of the survivors) has gained strength since 1970s at least among the scholars devoted to the interdisciplinary studies processes shaping the experiences of distress and healing among the trauma survivors. Priya (2018, p. 359), in a review of such social studies of trauma represented in the works of Abramowitz (2005), Bracken, et al (1995), Han (2004), Priya (2010, 2012, 2013, 2015) and Summerfield (1999), has highlighted three major aspects of survivors’ suffering: Demoralisation or intense distress associated with one’s failure to abide by cultural values Intense distress associated with a denial of experiential space Intense distress associated with disaggregation of relationships caused by political violence and atrocious events. …”