Remembering the West End: social science, mental health and the American urban environment, 1939–1968

Ramsden, Edmund; Smith, Matthew

doi:10.1017/s0963926817000025

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Such nuances, however, were often lost in the efforts to clear slums after World War II, as the research of Jane Jacobs (1961), Herbert Gans (1962), Erich Lindemann and others indicated (Ramsden and Smith, 2018). In 1958, for instance, the Boston Redevelopment Authority began demolishing a 48-acre section of Boston's West End that had been home to 2700 families, including a large number of lower-working-class Italian-Americans.…”

Section: Hobos and Ghetto Dwellersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychiatric epidemiology and the Chicago School of Sociology

Smith

2023

Hist Psychiatry

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This article explores the Chicago School of Sociology’s influence on psychiatric epidemiology. While the Chicago School text usually associated with psychiatric epidemiology is the 1939 book by Faris and Dunham, it is important to acknowledge the influence of earlier Chicago School projects during the 1920s. These projects, tackling everything from homelessness and delinquency to the ghetto and suicide, provided models not only for Faris and Dunham, but also for numerous methodological and theoretical insights for the social psychiatry projects that would emerge after World War II. The social sciences and the humanities still have important roles to play in informing contemporary approaches to psychiatric epidemiology and deriving ways to tackle the socio-economic problems that contribute to mental illness.

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Section: Hobos and Ghetto Dwellersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychiatric epidemiology and the Chicago School of Sociology

Smith

2023

Hist Psychiatry

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“…In the mid 20th century, the human sciences often attributed an individual's psychological state to larger societal forces; for example, psychoanalysis studied social and environmental forces, social psychiatry often focused on urban studies, and sociology developed an interest in other-directed personalities (Ramsden and Smith, 2018). In Company , Sondheim and Furth paralleled this attribution of problems to societal causes by using New York City as a central force in the show's narrative.…”

Section: ‘Alone Is Alone Not Alive’: the Lonely Crowd In Companymentioning

confidence: 99%

‘You never need an analyst with Bobby around’: The mid-20th-century human sciences in Sondheim and Furth's musicalCompany

Rubel

2021

History of the Human Sciences

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This article offers a case study in how historians of science can use musical theater productions to understand the cultural reception of scientific ideas. In 1970, Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's musical Company opened on Broadway. The show engaged with and reflected contemporary theories and ideas from the human sciences; Company's portrayal of its 35-year-old bachelor protagonist, his married friends, and his girlfriends reflected present-day theories from psychoanalysis, sexology, and sociology. In 2018, when director Marianne Elliott revived the show with a female protagonist, Company once again amplified contemporary dilemmas around human sciences expertise—this time, the biological fertility clock. Through Company, Sondheim and Furth—and later Elliott—constructed arguments about modern society that paralleled those put forth by contemporary human scientists, including psychoanalytic models of the mind, the lonely crowd phenomenon, and shifting conceptions of masculinity and femininity. Because of their wide popularity and potential for readaptation, musicals such as Company offer a promising source base for analyzing the relationship between contemporary society and scientific expertise in specific historical contexts.

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“…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 Fitzgerald et a., 2016a, 2016b; Ramsden & Smith, 2018). Simmel (1964/1919), for example, argued that urban hyperaesthesia threatens mental health, if not kept at bay by city dwellers, learning to adopt postures of inurement and indifference.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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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Remembering the West End: social science, mental health and the American urban environment, 1939–1968

Cited by 6 publications

References 32 publications

Psychiatric epidemiology and the Chicago School of Sociology

Psychiatric epidemiology and the Chicago School of Sociology

‘You never need an analyst with Bobby around’: The mid-20th-century human sciences in Sondheim and Furth's musicalCompany

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

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