Psychedelic compounds are on the cusp of being approved by medical regulators for treatment‐resistant mental health disorders. Following promising clinical trials, and as rates of mental ill health ...rise globally, psychedelic medicine presents a new paradigm for treating depression, anxiety, addiction and post‐traumatic stress disorder. The novelty of psychedelic therapies, the cultural stigma they elicit, and the challenges of regulation and implementation urgently call for a sociological lens onto this emerging field of psychiatry. This article identifies key sociological issues related to the medicalisation of psychedelic‐assisted therapies. It begins with a brief overview of the field's history and current treatment approaches. We then identify and critically examine three areas of sociological interest: the of role advocacy in the advancement of scientific research and the destigmatisation of psychedelics; issues related to the medicalisation and pharmaceuticalisation; and integration into healthcare systems. The challenges and affordances of psychedelics to existing therapeutic models, regulation and monetisation are highlighted, and the socio‐political context of the pharmaceutical industry, research, investment and implementation is examined. Drawing on health science literature in this field, the article offers a sociological lens on clinical psychedelic medicine as an emerging and potentially paradigm shifting field of psychiatry and psychotherapy.
Education for citizenship McLeod, Julie; Wright, Katie
History of education review,
01/2013, Letnik:
42, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This paper examines expert ideas about education for citizenship in 1930s Australia. Drawing on a larger study of adolescence and schooling during the middle decades of the twentieth century, the ...paper explores the role of international networks and US philanthropy in fostering the spread of new psychological and curriculum ideas that shaped citizenship education, and broader educational changes during the interwar period. A second purpose is to provide historical perspectives on contemporary concerns about the role of schooling in addressing social values and student wellbeing. Design/methodology/approach - The discussion is informed by approaches drawn from Foucauldian genealogy and historical studies of transnationalism. It examines constructions of the good and problem student and the networks of international educational expertise as forms of 'travelling ideas'. These transnational exchanges are explored through a close analysis of a defining moment in Australian educational history, the 1937 conference of the New Education Fellowship. Findings - The analysis reveals the ways in which psychological understandings and curriculum reforms shaped education for citizenship in the 1930s and identify in particular the emergent role of psychology in defining what it meant to be a good student and a good future citizen. The paper further finds that Australian education during the interwar years was more cosmopolitan and engaged in international discussions about citizenship and schooling than is usually remembered in the present. Elaborating this is important for building transnational histories of knowledge exchange in Australian education. Originality/value - The paper shows the value of a relational analysis of school curriculum and psychological understandings for more fully grasping the different dimensions of education for citizenship both in the interwar years and now. It offers fresh perspectives on contemporary educational debates about globalisation and youth identities, as played out in current concerns about social values and schooling. Author abstract
Intergenerational practice (IP) is an approach within community health promotion which aims to bring older and younger community members together in collaborative activity. Little research has ...critically examined the assumptions and values within IP and their implications for these communities. A sample of 15 IP planning documents were analysed using a social constructionist thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke2006) guided by Prior’s (2008) concept of documents as active agents. Three tensions were identified: a community-led model versus a contact model; old and young as targets versus older people as targets; and process-focused versus outcome-focused evaluation. IP has relied on contact theory as a mechanism of change, which has rooted IP to an overly individualistic practice targeted at older people (rather than all ages). In contrast, the community-led ethos of IP was also evident alongside values of mutual benefit for old and young, and a desire for more process-focused evaluation.
In this article, I examine how human wellbeing is constructed transnationally. Whereas much attention has been paid to migrants based in the North, how the out‐migration of kin affects the ...construction of human wellbeing of those living ‘back home’ remains little understood. Existing literature has tended to focus on the impact of financial remittances but the broader psychosocial impacts affecting human wellbeing outcomes have received less attention. In this article I suggest that this gap might be filled by adopting a human wellbeing approach to deepen understanding of what Peru‐based immediate relatives and close friends regard as the benefits and challenges of this migration. By examining how human wellbeing is constructed across material, perceptual and relational domains, this approach offers greater holism in analysis. I also extend work on ‘social remittances’ by offering insights into the meanings that ensure that migration continues to be regarded in Peru as a livelihood improvement strategy worth pursuing.
Wellbeing has become a keyword in youth and social policy, a construct deployed as a measure of a good life. Often associated with physical and mental health, wellbeing encompasses numerous ...indicators, from subjective experiences of happiness and satisfaction to markers of economic prosperity and basic human needs of security. This article examines wellbeing as an organizing concept in discourses on young people and argues for defamiliarizing its truth claims and cultural authority by investigating what wellbeing does. We begin by examining the rise of wellbeing, drawing attention to its conceptual muddiness and ambiguity. Framed by the Foucauldian notion of problematization, the analysis proceeds along two routes: first, through an historical consideration of wellbeing as a relational concept with antecedents, focusing on 'self-esteem'; and second, through a reading of wellbeing in contemporary educational policy. Informed by Somers' historical sociology of concept formation and Bacchi's critical policy analysis, we illuminate the mixed dimensions of wellbeing's reach, placing it within longer traditions of youth studies and psy-knowledges and showing its transformative promise as well as its individualizing effects. In doing so, we elaborate a methodological approach that can be adapted to examine other keywords in youth studies and social policy discourse.
Analyses of the influence of psychology and the growth of counselling during the 20th century commonly point to the deleterious effects of a cultural shift from reticence and self-reliance to ...emotional expressiveness and help-seeking. Indeed, the ascendancy of therapeutic culture has been widely interpreted as fostering cultural decline and enabling new forms of social control. Drawing on less pessimistic assessments of cultural change and recent directions in social theory, this article argues for greater recognition of the ambivalent legacy of the therapeutic turn. Through a reinterpretation of the consequences of the diminution of traditional authority, the weakening of the division between public and private life, and the rise of the confessional, the article challenges dominant readings of decline and control. In doing so, it draws attention to how psychological knowledge and therapeutic understandings of the self have given legitimacy to, and furnished a language with which to articulate, experiences of suffering formerly confined to private life. In advancing a less pessimistic interpretation of cultural change, it considers two historic moments in Australia: the advent of telephone counselling in the 1960s and the Royal Commission on Human Relationships in the 1970s.
The abuse of children in institutional settings is an issue of ongoing social, public, and political concern internationally. While societal responses to historical abuse have been the subject of ...considerable scholarship in recent years, conceptualisation of the role of activism remains limited. This article aims to advance sociological and interdisciplinary perspectives on nonrecent institutional child abuse through a conceptualisation of activist mobilisation. The article begins by providing context for the emergence of institutional child abuse as a social issue. A brief overview of key themes and debates in the interdisciplinary literature is then offered, and a critical gap in current scholarship is identified in relation to activism. Drawing on illustrative examples of activist mobilisation, both in the form of survivor narratives and strategies aimed at influencing policy, the article sets out how a sociology of activism in the field of historical institutional child abuse might proceed. Through attention to the social dynamics of activism, and conceptualisation of collective action in this domain as a social movement, the article provides new insights for the field and an alternative to sociological theorisation of responses to historical institutional child abuse as simply constituting a public scandal or moral panic.
The establishment of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse followed years of lobbying by survivor groups, damning findings from previous inquiries, and increasing ...societal recognition of the often lifelong and intergenerational damage caused by child sexual abuse. Through extensive media coverage, the Royal Commission brought into public view the reality that the sexual abuse of children was widespread, and its recommendations are prompting organisational, policy, and legislative reform. This article explores the background to the Royal Commission, situating it within the history of previous inquiries and growing community outrage at the failure of institutions to adequately protect children and respond appropriately when abuse occurs. The article explores the ways in which the Royal Commission, more so than previous inquiries, brought child sexual abuse into public discourse. It also serves as an introduction to this special issue of the Journal of Australian Studies, which illustrates how the Royal Commission has fostered new scholarship across a range of disciplines as researchers engage with complex issues related to institutional child sexual abuse, its history, causes, impacts, and the important role of inquiries in confronting it.
Recent literature on international migrants employed in the lower echelons of the labour market in London has signalled the need to pay more attention to the resources that migrants deploy as well as ...greater holism in analysis. I suggest in this article that these gaps might be filled using a human wellbeing approach. It is argued that the key advantage of the human wellbeing concept is that it serves as an umbrella or unifying framework that brings together ideas from across a range of disciplines (economics, psychology, sociology) into a common space or conceptual frame, highlighting the complex interplay that exists between material, perceptual and relational dimensions. Application of a human wellbeing approach to the field of international migration has the potential to fill gaps in existing paradigms within migration studies such as transnationalism and multiculturalism. This article also speaks to debates on international migration and social policy, and applies a human wellbeing approach to the case of Peruvian migrants in London.
Research on intergenerational transmissions of poverty and inequality has tended to focus on material transfers. This article refocuses attention on the intersection of material and psychosocial ...transfers, which reveals temporal and gendered complexities. It examines three key ideas emerging from the life course literature (relationality, intersectionality and intergenerationality) to shed light on how these complexities might be addressed. It is argued that a human well-being lens is potentially useful as a unifying framework to integrate these ideas, as it interrogates what living well means over the life course and how it is constructed relationally.
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