Universal Biology, Local Society? Notes from Anthropology

Bieler, Patrick; Niewöhner, Jörg

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-52879-7_27

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…193-194). 1 Like similar work cited above on the spatial experiences of those with mental ill health, this example signals that subjectivitiesincluding mental statesare formed in dwelling and doing (Sennett, 2018), in the continuum of emotions, bodies, sociality, matter, and space, in attunement with the felt qualities of experience as it unfolds through particular places and situations (Bieler & Newhöner, 2018;Richaud & Amin, 2020;Simpson, 2017).…”

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confidence: 76%

“…The role of the city for those living with mental illness has long interested geographers (Duff, 2012;Parr, 1997Parr, , 1999, generally skeptical of any reduction of urban stressors to one or two general proxies of urbanicity (Winz, 2018; see also Söderström et al, 2016). An interest in the finer grain of connection between diverse mental health states and city environments is beginning to emerge in ethnographic work within geography and cognate disciplines on precarity, stress, and affliction in particular places (Bieler & Newhöner, 2018;Pettit, 2018Pettit, , 2019Philo et al, 2019;Söderström et al, 2016;Straughan et al, 2019;Wilkinson & Ortega-Alcázar, 2019a). This work, which addresses both recognised mental illnesses such as anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia and other afflictions such as exhaustion, weariness, melancholy, and uncertainty, reveals how the precisions of place and subjective experience centrally mediate the impact of urban life on human wellbeing.…”

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Stress and the ecology of urban experience: Migrant mental lives in central Shanghai

Amin

Richaud

2020

Trans Inst British Geog

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Responding to claims in urban studies and epidemiology that modern urban living negatively affects the mental health of the poor and newcomers to the city, this paper offers a different account based on an ethnography of a neighbourhood in central Shanghai, where precarious rural migrant lives unfold. Drawing on the concept of "ecologies of experience" to recognise the making of everyday sensibilities and affective tensions in urban dwelling, it focuses on subjectivity formed in habits of negotiating the urban environment, in coping with troubled thoughts and feelings posed by precariousness. The paper considers ecologies of experience arising in distinct prosaic locationsa public library, a large bookstore, and a caféfound to be important in the everyday spatial practices of migrants, grounding to different degrees of success hopes for their present and future in the city. In such dwelling, the stresses to mental healthconsistently described by migrants as "pressure" (yali)seem to be moderated through varied forms of respite, slowing-down, and "moments of being," though always in ambivalent ways. In recognising the everyday materiality of urban living, the paper looks beyond the tendency in studies of China's internal migration to read off migrant mental health outcomes from structural disadvantages related to work, welfare, and living conditions. Conceptually, it opens new ground in thinking by acknowledging the role of the felt qualities of lived experience in managing mental states, building on work in geography, sociology, and anthropology attentive to the affective resonances of place and to practices of urban negotiation. K E Y W O R D S ecologies of experience, ethnography, internal migration, mental health, urban China, urban public space 1 | INTRODUCTION In the history of writing on the effects of modern metropolitan life on mental health, an influential line of thought with roots in urban sociology argues that the stresses and strains faced by vulnerable populations such as the urban poor, combined with challenging urban conditions such as overcrowding, and sensory overstimulation, make for mental disorders such as anxiety, stress, depression, and schizophrenia (see

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confidence: 76%

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Stress and the ecology of urban experience: Migrant mental lives in central Shanghai

Amin

Richaud

2020

Trans Inst British Geog

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Enacting biosocial complexity: Stress, epigenetic biomarkers and the tools of postgenomics

Chiapperino

2024

Soc Stud Sci

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This article analyses attempts to enact complexity in postgenomic experimentations using the case of epigenetic research on biomarkers of psychosocial stress. Enacting complexity in this research means dissecting multiple so-called biosocial processes of health differentiation in the face of stressful experiences. To characterize enactments of biosocial complexity, the article develops the concepts of complexity work and complexification. The former emphasizes the social, technical, and material work that goes into the production of mixed biological and social representations of stress in epigenetics. The latter underlines how complexity can be assembled differently across distinct configurations of experimental work. Specifically, complexification can be defined as producing, stabilizing, and normalizing novel experimental systems that are supposed to improve techno-scientific enactments of complexity. In the case of epigenetics, complexification entails a reconfiguration of postgenomic experimental systems in ways that some actors deem ‘better’ at enacting health as a biosocial process. This study of complexity work and complexification shows that biosocial complexity is hardly a univocal enterprise in epigenetics. Consequently, the article calls for abandoning analysis of these research practices using clear-cut dichotomies of reductionism vs. holism, as well as simplicity vs. complexity. More broadly, the article suggests the relevance of a sociology of complexification for STS approaches to complexity in scientific practices. Complementing the existing focus on complexity as instrumental rhetoric in contemporary sciences, complexification directs analytical attention to the pragmatic opportunities that alternative (biosocial) complexities offer to collective, societal, and political thinking about science in society.

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Santé et environnement

Chiapperino,

del Rio Carral

2022

Santé Et Environnement

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Universal Biology, Local Society? Notes from Anthropology

Cited by 3 publications

References 70 publications

Stress and the ecology of urban experience: Migrant mental lives in central Shanghai

Stress and the ecology of urban experience: Migrant mental lives in central Shanghai

Enacting biosocial complexity: Stress, epigenetic biomarkers and the tools of postgenomics

Santé et environnement

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