Comfort in Small Things? Clothing, Control and Agency in County Lunatic Asylums in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century England

Hamlett, Jane; Hoskins, Lesley

doi:10.1080/13555502.2012.744241

Cited by 24 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…The articles in this collection also bring to light different methodological approaches for examining materialities of care. Although routinely used by social historians to trace material cultures in care contexts over time, attending to archival sources such as, letters, case book notes, management minutes, stock lists, and photographs (Hamlett and Hoskins , Nelson ) also offers much scope for sociologists (Prior ). Studies of medical records, case notes (Berg ) and architectural plans (Nettleton et al .…”

Section: Methods For Studying ‘Materialities Of Care’mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Historical research also draws attention to the significance of mundane materials to understanding the experiences of service users, social hierarchies and relationships. For instance, Hamlett (2015) explores experiences of Victorian asylums through historical analysis of material life, drawing attention to the importance of 'small things'false teeth, glasses, jewellery, watchesin supporting classed and gendered identities and facilitating wider connections with the outside world (Hamlett and Hoskins 2013). These themes are pertinent for analysis of material cultures in contemporary health and social care institutions, and indeed we bring a focus on relatively neglected and mundane materialities to the fore of current debates in this collection.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Conceptualising ‘materialities of care’: making visible mundane material culture in health and social care contexts

Buse

Martin

Nettleton

2018

Sociology Health & Illness

156

116

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'Materialities of care' is outlined as a heuristic device for making visible the mundane and often unnoticed aspects of material culture within health and social care contexts, and exploring interrelations between materials and care in practice. Three analytic strands inherent to the concept are delineated: spatialities of care, temporalities of care and practices of care. These interconnecting themes span the articles in this special issue. The articles explore material practice across a range of clinical and non-clinical spaces, including hospitals, hospices, care homes, museums, domestic spaces, and community spaces such as shops and tenement stairwells. The collection addresses fleeting moments of care, as well as choreographed routines that order bodies and materials. Throughout there is a focus on practice, and relations between materials and care as ongoing, emergent and processual. We conclude by reflecting on methodological approaches for examining 'materialities of care', and offer some thoughts as to how this analytic approach might be applied to future research within the sociology of health and illness.

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Section: Methods For Studying ‘Materialities Of Care’mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conceptualising ‘materialities of care’: making visible mundane material culture in health and social care contexts

Buse

Martin

Nettleton

2018

Sociology Health & Illness

156

116

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“…Recent work on patient experience and sense of self has looked to the material culture of the institution (patient dress, personal adornment, possessions, etc) to argue that through requesting personal items through letters and through controlling their appearance, patients might assert and preserve their sense of self while being away from home 9. In addition, case notes do sometimes mention if a patient had a particular love of self-adornment, ‘unusual’ habits or, in the case of the patient pictured in figure 10, a tendency to surround herself with ‘a useless litter of bric-a-brac’(Eleanor Frances M., p. 208) 65.…”

Section: Images and Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘She sits all day in the attitude depicted in the photo’: photography and the psychiatric patient in the late nineteenth century

Rawling

2017

Med Humanities

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The links between mental state and art in all its various forms and media have long been of interest to historians, critics, artists, patients, and doctors. Photographs of patients constitute an extensive but largely unexplored archive that can be used to recover patient experience in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century. The camera and the photograph became tools to communicate information about mental ill health between doctors, their patients, and their colleagues. They were published in textbooks and journals, exhibited, exchanged, and pasted into medical case books alongside case notes. But they were also used by patients to communicate their own experiences, identity, and sense of self. This article uses published and case book photographs from c. to examine the networks of communication between different stakeholders and discourses.

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“…As previously outlined, studies (see Hamlett and Hoskins 2013;Sidlauskas 2013) have shown how patients have fashioned, posed, enacted and constructed their representation in asylum photographs as a significant assertion of subjectivity (Sidlauskas 2013, 2). Accordingly, could it be plausible to believe that some colonial subjects adopted a certain demeanour or pose in order to receive discharge from the asylum?…”

Section: Casebook Photographsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Photographs from the Grahamstown Lunatic Asylum, South Africa, 1890–1907

Plessis

2014

Social Dynamics

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This essay investigates photographs taken at the Grahamstown Lunatic Asylum during the superintendency of Dr Thomas Duncan Greenlees, 1890 to 1907. It examines two specific sets of photographs: first, the photographs taken for public consumption, and, second, the casebook photographs of the patients. I argue that the photographs produced for public consumption ascribe to the broader public image of the asylum. Greenlees constructed a public image of the asylum being committed to the curative regime of moral therapy while catering to the tastes, proclivities and activities of white private patients. The photographs for public consumption also include images of black patients.Yet, there was differential treatment for black patients. Under Greenlees" superintendency they were assigned supervised physical labour tasks under the pretext of them being occupational treatment. The discourses of cure and recovery in such a "treatment" regimen become signalled by the black patient"s ability to work. Thus, the curative ideal of the asylum for black patients, disseminated as its public image, is primarily concerned with domesticating black bodies into a docile and cooperative labour force. However, the public image of black patients as being passive before the asylum"s regimen is problematised through an analysis of the second set of images -the casebook photographs. These photographs depict patients confronting, refusing and resisting the asylum administration. Thus, the casebook photographs are valuable in recuperating active resistance and hold the potential to undermine the public image of the asylum.

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Comfort in Small Things? Clothing, Control and Agency in County Lunatic Asylums in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century England

Cited by 24 publications

References 0 publications

Conceptualising ‘materialities of care’: making visible mundane material culture in health and social care contexts

Conceptualising ‘materialities of care’: making visible mundane material culture in health and social care contexts

‘She sits all day in the attitude depicted in the photo’: photography and the psychiatric patient in the late nineteenth century

Photographs from the Grahamstown Lunatic Asylum, South Africa, 1890–1907

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