Daughters of Parvati : women and madness in contemporary India / Sarah Pinto.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pinto, Sarah.

Series:

Contemporary Ethnography

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mentally ill women--Care--India.

Mentally ill women.

Psychiatric hospitals--India.

Psychiatric hospitals.

Women--Mental health services--India.

Women.

Psychiatry--India--History--21st century.

Psychiatry.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (294 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In her role as devoted wife, the Hindu goddess Parvati is the divine embodiment of viraha, the agony of separation from one's beloved, a form of love that is also intense suffering. These contradictory emotions reflect the overlapping dissolutions of love, family, and mental health explored by Sarah Pinto in this visceral ethnography. Daughters of Parvati centers on the lives of women in different settings of psychiatric care in northern India, particularly the contrasting environments of a private mental health clinic and a wing of a government hospital. Through an anthropological consideration of modern medicine in a nonwestern setting, Pinto challenges the dominant framework for addressing crises such as long-term involuntary commitment, poor treatment in homes, scarcity of licensed practitioners, heavy use of pharmaceuticals, and the ways psychiatry may reproduce constraining social conditions. Inflected by the author's own experience of separation and single motherhood during her fieldwork, Daughters of Parvati urges us to think about the ways women bear the consequences of the vulnerabilities of love and family in their minds, bodies, and social worlds.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Note on Transliterations

Introduction: Love and Affliction

1. Rehabilitating Ammi

2. On Dissolution

3. Moksha and Mishappenings

4. On Dissociation

5. Making a Case

6. Ethics of Dissolution

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780812209280

0812209281

OCLC:

874148854