Nima Bassiri's Books

Madness and Enterprise

Psychiatry, Economic Reason, and the Emergence of Pathological Value

By: Nima Bassiri

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Madness and Enterprise

Psychiatry, Economic Reason, and the Emergence of Pathological Value

By: Nima Bassiri

This book explores the economic norms embedded within psychiatric thinking about mental illness in the North Atlantic world. Over the course of the nineteenth century, the concept of madness was subjected to an economically saturated style of psychiatric reasoning. Psychiatrists across Western Europe and the United States attributed financial and even moral value to an array of pathological conditions, such that some mental disorders were seen as financial assets and others as economic liabilities. By turning to economic conduct and asking whether patients, such as eccentrics, appeared capable of managing their financial affairs and money, psychiatrists could often circumvent uncertainties about a person's psychiatric health. What we learn is how in psychiatry an economic lens was used to reveal mental illness and uncover the hidden economic value of pathology itself. The psychiatric turn to economic reasoning signaled a transformation of the very idea of value in the modern North Atlantic. For the differences between the most common forms of social valuation-moral value, medical value, and economic value-were flattened and rendered equivalent and interchangeable. If what was good and what was healthy was increasingly conflated with what was remunerative (and vice versa), then a conceptual space opened through which madness itself could be converted into an economic form and subsequently redeemed, and even revered"--

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Page Count

323

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226830896

ISBN 13

9780226830896

Madness and Enterprise

Psychiatry, Economic Reason, and the Emergence of Pathological Value

By: Nima Bassiri

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Madness and Enterprise

Psychiatry, Economic Reason, and the Emergence of Pathological Value

By: Nima Bassiri

Uncovers a powerful relationship between pathology and money: beginning in the nineteenth century, the severity of mental illness was measured against a patient’s economic productivity. Madness and Enterprise reveals the economic norms embedded within psychiatric thinking about mental illness in the North Atlantic world. Over the course of the nineteenth century, various forms of madness were subjected to a style of psychiatric reasoning that was preoccupied with money. Psychiatrists across Western Europe and the United States attributed financial and even moral value to an array of pathological conditions, such that some mental disorders were seen as financial assets and others as economic liabilities. By turning to economic conduct and asking whether potential patients appeared capable of managing their financial affairs or even generating wealth, psychiatrists could often bypass diagnostic uncertainties about a person’s mental state. Through an exploration of the intertwined histories of psychiatry and economic thought, Nima Bassiri shows how this relationship transformed the very idea of value in the modern North Atlantic, as the most common forms of social valuation—moral value, medical value, and economic value—were rendered equivalent and interchangeable. If what was good and what was healthy were increasingly conflated with what was remunerative (and vice versa), then a conceptual space opened through which madness itself could be converted into an economic form and subsequently redeemed—and even revered.

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323

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226830888

ISBN 13

9780226830889

Plasticity and Pathology

On the Formation of the Neural Subject

By: David Bates,Nima Bassiri

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Plasticity and Pathology

On the Formation of the Neural Subject

By: David Bates,Nima Bassiri

With the rise of cognitive science and the revolution in neuroscience, it is now commonplace to assume that the study of a human person—a thinking, feeling, acting subject—is ultimately the study of the human brain. In both Europe and the United States, massive state-funded research is focused on mapping the brain in all its remarkable complexity. The metaphors employed are largely technological: A wiring diagram of synaptic connectivity will lead to a better understanding of human behavior and perhaps insights into the breakdown of human personhood with diseases of the brain such as Alzheimer’s. Alongside this technologized discourse of the brain as locus of human subjectivity we find another perspective, one that emphasizes its essential plasticity—in both the developmental sense and as a response to traumas such as strokes, tumors, or gunshot wounds. This collection of essays brings together a diverse range of scholars to investigate how the “neural subject” of the twenty-first century came to be. Taking approaches both historical and theoretical, they probe the possibilities and limits of neuroscientific understandings of human experience. Topics include landmark studies in the history of neuroscience, the relationship between neural and technological “pathologies,” and analyses of contemporary concepts of plasticity and pathology in cognitive neuroscience. Central to the volume is a critical examination of the relationship between pathology and plasticity. Because pathology is often the occasion for neural reorganization and adaptation, it exists not in opposition to the brain’s “normal” operation but instead as something intimately connected to our ways of being and understanding.

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368

Publisher

Fordham University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0823266168

ISBN 13

9780823266166

Plasticity and Pathology

On the Formation of the Neural Subject

By: David Bates,Nima Bassiri

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Plasticity and Pathology

On the Formation of the Neural Subject

By: David Bates,Nima Bassiri

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

368

Publisher

Fordham University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0823266168

ISBN 13

9780823266166

Book's by Nima Bassiri

Madness and Enterprise

Madness and Enterprise

Madness and Enterprise

Madness and Enterprise

Plasticity and Pathology

Plasticity and Pathology

Plasticity and Pathology

Plasticity and Pathology

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