'Experiences of Modernity' and Psychiatry: Global Histories in the 19th and 20th Centuries

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Hubertus Büschel
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2015 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 277238776

The project will investigate global negotiations of concepts of modernization in anthropological, psychological and psychiatric fields of knowledge between Europe and areas of the Global South in the 19th and 20th centuries. It will analyze the discourses and practices regarding the notion that so-called primitive people in tropical and sub-tropical world regions could become traumatized and mentally ill through experiences of modernization. It will also examine the historical notions that, based on this fact, one could draw conclusions on European psychiatric civilization-sicknesses and their therapies. The project consists of three sub-projects: Firstly, a monograph regarding the aforementioned context, analyzes the history of entanglement between Africa and Europe between 1850 and 1980 (1a). The first part of the book will research the continuities or changes in discourses on the side of European anthropologists, missionaries, colonial and development experts, physicians and African participants. The second part will analyze the global circulation of psychiatric discourses and practices: The focus will lie on three so-called reformative psychiatric hospitals in East- and West-Africa, which were founded around 1900 and engaged in close exchange with European partner institutions. The third part is an inquiry into the global effects of this exchange and will show that Africa was - also in the sense of research about modernization and psychiatric illness - a living laboratory (Helen Tilley). The second sub-project is a workshop with a broader focus than the monograph that goes beyond Europe and Africa (1b). The third sub-project is a published volume of articles based on this workshop (1c).Altogether, this project intends to provide a significant contribution to the global history of the entanglement of psychiatric discourses and practices, referring to contemporary reflections on the effects of modernity. Expanding upon existing research, the project will focus on quasi-humanitarian, reform-psychiatric approaches in tropical and subtropical areas in the 19th and 20th centuries as well as on the perceptions and experiences of all people involved - whenever possible. It will also be an inquiry into the global circulation and translation of anthropological and psychiatric knowledge. The projects intends to show not only how normative definitions of modernity underwent questioning, local negotiation and pluralization throughout the time period under investigation, but also how prominent stereotypes, racial othering, social inclusion and exclusion and, last but not least, physical and psychic violence play important roles in these processes.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants