Daughters of Parvati : women and madness in contemporary India
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Daughters of Parvati : women and madness in contemporary India
（Contemporary ethnography series）
University of Pennsylvania Press, c2014
Available at / 2 libraries
-
No Libraries matched.
- Remove all filters.
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [263]-271) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
In her role as devoted wife, the Hindu goddess Parvati is the divine embodiment of viraha, the agony of separation from one's beloved, a form of love that is also intense suffering. These contradictory emotions reflect the overlapping dissolutions of love, family, and mental health explored by Sarah Pinto in this visceral ethnography.
Daughters of Parvati centers on the lives of women in different settings of psychiatric care in northern India, particularly the contrasting environments of a private mental health clinic and a wing of a government hospital. Through an anthropological consideration of modern medicine in a nonwestern setting, Pinto challenges the dominant framework for addressing crises such as long-term involuntary commitment, poor treatment in homes, scarcity of licensed practitioners, heavy use of pharmaceuticals, and the ways psychiatry may reproduce constraining social conditions. Inflected by the author's own experience of separation and single motherhood during her fieldwork, Daughters of Parvati urges us to think about the ways women bear the consequences of the vulnerabilities of love and family in their minds, bodies, and social worlds.
Table of Contents
Note on Transliterations
Introduction: Love and Affliction
Chapter 1. Rehabilitating Ammi
Chapter 2. On Dissolution
Chapter 3. Moksha and Mishappenings
Chapter 4. On Dissociation
Chapter 5. Making a Case
Chapter 6. Ethics of Dissolution
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
by "Nielsen BookData"