Dörte Bemme, ‘The re-configuration of ‘Mental Health’ into a global object of care’

Date: Thursday 3rd December 2015

Time:12.30pm

Venue: Sir Charles Wilson Seminar Room A/B, 1 University Ave, G12 8NN

Chair: Dr Ross White

Register: DörteBemme.eventbrite.co.uk

Visiting lecture by Dörte Bemme, a PhD candidate at McGill University. Her research involves multi-sited fieldwork within the institutional assemblage of Global Mental Health, investigating how GMH re-configures the knowledges and practices that define what a ‘mental health’ problem is and how it can be operationalized in practice. Dorte Bemme Read More‌.

Abstract:

Global Mental Health (GMH) has emerged as a novel field of knowledge and practice that seeks to address mental disorders on a ‘global’ scale. This talk argues that an analysis of GMH informed by an ‘anthropology of knowledge’ may open up engagements beyond a ‘cultural’ or ‘local’ framework. Furthermore, close empirical attention to the shifting conceptual architecture of GMH may yield surprising insights. The talk will explore two such shifts in the problematization of mental health: 1) From the search for an underlying ‘nature’ of mental illnesses to the procedural validation of ‘evidence’, and 2) To a new emphasis on ‘active ingredients’ in complex interventions that allow for the disaggregation and re-assemblage of mental health knowledge across difference and contexts.