Social Pathology in Comparative Perspective: The Nature and Psychology of Civil Society

(Hardback)

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This book builds on the notion that social pathology differs from society to society and that the sense of character that develops in each society is specific to different perceptions of interpersonal obligations and responsibilities in that society. The book deals with the cultural and psychological effects of social change relevant to the study of modernity and postmodernity. It deals with particular social issues such as war and conflict, juvenile delinquency, problems of social ecology and religious revivalism, all reflecting the stresses of modern life and social change within very concrete, particular environments. Braun and his contributors show how individual character and civil society evolve together to create culturally specific trajectories of social change.

Reviews

To theoreticians, researchers, and practitioners of transcultural psychiatry, the value of this book is threefold. First, it constitutes a source of falsifiable hypotheses. Some of them are explicitly stated, others can be derived form the authors' observations and formulations. Secondly, on the case level, many of the points and leads in this volume may contribute a culturally personally more sensitive and deeper understanding of a client's experience. Finally, on a general plane, it can provide a realistic context for understanding the distressing and disabling expereinces of people in a culturally diverse and rapidly chainging environment.-Transcultural Psychiatry
"To theoreticians, researchers, and practitioners of transcultural psychiatry, the value of this book is threefold. First, it constitutes a source of falsifiable hypotheses. Some of them are explicitly stated, others can be derived form the authors' observations and formulations. Secondly, on the case level, many of the points and leads in this volume may contribute a culturally personally more sensitive and deeper understanding of a client's experience. Finally, on a general plane, it can provide a realistic context for understanding the distressing and disabling expereinces of people in a culturally diverse and rapidly chainging environment."-Transcultural Psychiatry

Author Bio

JEROME BRAUN is an independent scholar interested in the nexus of the individual and the state. He is the editor of Psychological Aspects of Modernity (Praeger, 1993) and the author of The Humanized Workplace: A Psychological, Historical, and Practical Perspective (Praeger, 1994).