Exotic Deviance: Medicalizing Cultural Idioms from Strangeness to Illness

by Robert E. Bartholomew

Book Overview

Exotic Deviance is a seminal study of Western psychiatric interpretations of some of the most bizarre behaviors ever recorded. Robert Bartholomew examines behaviors so strange by modern Western... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0870815989
• ISBN13: 9780870815980
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: University Press of Colorado
• Length: 280 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Decoding 'Strange' Symbol Systems

What others say: "Bartholomew demonstrates deep scholarship in the reviews of cross-cultural behavioral conditions ... and is clear, forceful and effective." -Professor Arthur Kleinman, Chair, Department of Social Medicine, Harvard University "Exotic Deviance combines immeasurably meticulous scholarship with rich personal experience.... I anticipate [this book] will come to occupy a singular place in the field of social studies of deviance and medicine. Exotic Deviance will appeal to a wide readership, including scholars concerned with the sociology of deviance, medical anthropologists, Southeast Asian specialists, and transcultural psychiatrists (even those of traditional persuasion, who will be irritated at first, but ultimately convinced). -Dr Robert Barrett, Department of Anthropology, University of Adelaide, writing in Oceania 2003. [Bartholomew allows us] "to throw off cultural blinkers and look freshly at an amazing human world in which dismay and anguish have to be understood as such and not dismissed as medical disorders requiring simplistic responses." -Allan Patience, Professor of Political Science and Asian Studies, Victoria University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia "Robert Bartholomew makes a unique and important contribution. Basing his research on first-hand experience and an impressive command of the literature, Bartholomew extends the medicalization of deviance to nonWestern societies." --Professor Peter Conrad, Chair, Department of Sociology, Brandeis University