The urban brain : mental health in the vital city

Title:

Author:

Rose, Nikolas S., author.

Fitzgerald, Des, author.

ISBN:

9780691178608

Publication Date as Range:

2022

Publication Information:

Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [2022]

Subject Term:

Cities and towns -- Health aspects.

Urban health.

Urban ecology (Sociology) -- Health aspects.

Mental health -- Environmental aspects.

Stress (Psychology)

Language:

English

Summary:

Most of the world's people now live in cities and millions have moved from the countryside to the rapidly growing megacities of the global south. How does the urban experience shape the mental lives of those living in and moving to cities today? Sociologists study cities as centers of personal progress and social innovation, but also exclusion, racism, and inequality. Psychiatrists try to explain the high rates of mental disorders among urban dwellers, especially migrants. But the split between the social and life sciences has hindered understanding of how urban experience is written into the bodies and brains of urbanites. In The Urban Brain, Nikolas Rose and Des Fitzgerald seek to revive the collaboration between sociology and psychiatry about these critical questions. Reexamining the relationship between the city and the brain, Rose and Fitzgerald explore the ways cities shape the mental health and illness of those who inhabit them. Drawing on the social and life sciences, The Urban Brain takes an ecosocial approach to the vital city, in which humans live and thrive but too often get sick and suffer. The result demonstrates what we can gain by a vitalist approach to the mental lives of those migrating to and living in cities, focusing on the ways that humans make, remake, and inhabit their urban lifeworlds.

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Library	Item Type	Item Barcode	Call Number	Status
Searching... Brisbane Square Library	Non-Fiction	34000118172345	307.76 ROS	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Chermside Library	Non-Fiction	34000118172386	307.76 ROS	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Garden City Library (Westfield)	Non-Fiction	34000118172303	307.76 ROS	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

Bridging the social and life sciences to unlock the mystery of how cities shape mental health and illness

Most of the world's people now live in cities and millions have moved from the countryside to the rapidly growing megacities of the global south. How does the urban experience shape the mental lives of those living in and moving to cities today? Sociologists study cities as centers of personal progress and social innovation, but also exclusion, racism, and inequality. Psychiatrists try to explain the high rates of mental disorders among urban dwellers, especially migrants. But the split between the social and life sciences has hindered understanding of how urban experience is written into the bodies and brains of urbanites. In The Urban Brain , Nikolas Rose and Des Fitzgerald seek to revive the collaboration between sociology and psychiatry about these critical questions. Reexamining the relationship between the city and the brain, Rose and Fitzgerald explore the ways cities shape the mental health and illness of those who inhabit them.

Drawing on the social and life sciences, The Urban Brain takes an ecosocial approach to the vital city, in which humans live and thrive but too often get sick and suffer. The result demonstrates what we can gain by a vitalist approach to the mental lives of those migrating to and living in cities, focusing on the ways that humans make, remake, and inhabit their urban lifeworlds.

Author Notes

Nikolas Rose is Distinguished Honorary Professor in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University, and an Honorary Professor in the Institute of Advanced Studies at University College, London. His books include (with Joelle M. Abi-Rached) Neuro (Princeton). Twitter @rose_nikolas
Des Fitzgerald is associate professor of sociology at the University of Exeter. His books include Tracing Autism. Twitter @Des_Fitzgerald

Reviews (1)

Choice Review

This book aims "to think of a dynamic interplay in which human bodies and human environments constrain each other, mark each other, [and] intermingle in an awkward, shuffling embrace" when considering "human neurobiology," particularly in relation to urban mental health. Each chapter discusses some facet of the embodied urban brain and the sociology of inhabitation. Rose (Australian National Univ.; Univ. College London, UK) and Fitzgerald (Univ. of Exeter, UK) argue for reframing social theory to include the human experience of mental health and illness in research focused on living in a major city. The book draws on the historical literature of international migration as well as migration from rural to urban spaces. Its consideration for ecology and its focus on moving to the city with the overlay of stress and adversity set it apart from other texts that have theorized about the impact of urban living on mental health. As an example, there is a chapter on Shanghai and its population growth caused by 5.6 million people moving from the countryside in a span of 10 years. Extensive, informative notes augment each chapter, and the index is thorough and detailed. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students and faculty. --Kathleen E. Murphy, independent scholar

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Embodied Brains	p. 7
Urban Inhabitations	p. 9
Moving People	p. 12
Vital Sociology	p. 14
The Plan of the Book	p. 18
1 Modern Cities, Migrant Cities	p. 21
Mentalities of Migration	p. 22
Seeing the City	p. 26
Chicago: Proud and Vigorous	p. 30
Philadelphia: Striving, Palpitating	p. 39
How Do They Really Live?	p. 45
From Migrant Biopolitics to Migration Studies	p. 53
The Migrant City Today	p. 60
2 Migration, the Metropolis, and Mental Disorder	p. 62
Psychiatry Encounters Migration	p. 64
Degeneracy, Eugenics, and Migration	p. 66
Migration and Mental Health Today	p. 73
Refining 'Migration'	p. 76
Mental Health and 'the Slums'	p. 79
Crushed Dreams or First Steps	p. 84
3 The Metropolis and Mental Life Today-Shanghai 2018	p. 86
Migrant Nation	p. 87
Migrant Labor	p. 92
China: A Mental Health Crisis?	p. 102
'Stress' and the Psy Complex	p. 107
Measuring and Managing Migrant Mental Health	p. 110
4 Everyone Knows What Stress Is and No One Knows What Stress Is	p. 118
General Adaptation Syndrome	p. 120
Locating Stress	p. 124
Rat Cities, City Rats	p. 126
The Meaning of Urban Stress	p. 132
Stress and Beyond: Toward the Urban Brain	p. 137
5 The Urban Brain	p. 140
The Urbanicity Effect	p. 141
Understanding Urbanicity-To a New Style of Thought?	p. 145
Seeing the Urban Brain	p. 148
The Biopolitics of Stress	p. 155
Epigenetics: Beyond the Genetic Program	p. 161
Neuroplasticity: The Modulated Brain	p. 167
The Exposome: An Urban Sensorium	p. 170
Toward a Conception of the Neurosocial City	p. 174
6 Another Urban Biopolitics Is Possible	p. 176
Urban Justice: The Right to the City	p. 178
Of 'Other' Urban Spaces	p. 180
Transcorporeal Exposures: Beyond the Binary	p. 183
Opening Our Eyes	p. 185
Mental Maps of the Imagined City	p. 186
Ecological Psychology	p. 188
Niching	p. 192
Precarious Niching	p. 194
A New Urban Biopolitics?	p. 198
Conclusion: Toward a Sociology of Inhabitation	p. 200
Notes	p. 213
Bibliography	p. 229
Index	p. 259

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Table of Contents