Abstract
Social theory has much to gain from taking up the challenges of conceptualizing ‘mental health’. Such an approach to the stunting of human mental life in conditions of adversity requires us to open up the black box of ‘environment’, and to develop a vitalist biosocial science, informed by and in conversation with the life sciences and the neurosciences. In this paper we draw on both classical and contemporary social theory to begin this task. We explore human inhabitation – how humans inhabit their ‘ecological niches’ – and examine a number of conceptual developments that ‘deconstruct’ the binary distinction between organism and environment. We argue that we must understand the neurological, ecological and social pathways and mechanisms that shape human (mental) life if we are to address the central concerns of our discipline with inequity and injustice as these are inscribed into the bodies and souls of human beings.
Highlights
It is time for those concerned with social theory to re-engage with questions of ‘mental health’.1 Half a century ago, critical analyses of mental health were at the heart of our understandings of the social world – whether in the work of Erving Goffman, Michel Foucault, R.D
At the very time when ‘mental health problems’ suffuse popular debate, when social epidemiologists have demonstrated the crucial role of ‘social determinants’ of mental health, and the neurosciences are postulating novel pathways linking adverse social experience to mental distress, these issues have been marginalized to a disciplinary sub-speciality
A reengagement of social theory with questions of mental health, in critical dialogue with contemporary neurosciences, can help us understand the social origins of mental distress but can play a part in ‘revitalizing’ sociology itself
Summary
It is time for those concerned with social theory to re-engage with questions of ‘mental health’.1 Half a century ago, critical analyses of mental health were at the heart of our understandings of the social world – whether in the work of Erving Goffman, Michel Foucault, R.D.
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