Description
Book SynopsisStefan Ecks explores depression and antidepressant uses in India to develop a theory of value that captures both market worth and cultural and ethical norms.
Trade Review“In this fascinating, timely, and provocative new book, Stefan Ecks uses ethnographic examples of depression and the use of antidepressants in India to rethink anthropological and economic theory. Conceptually bold and empirically grounded,
Living Worth upends capitalist assumptions that underpin global mental health and offers a new and vital way to think about how embodiment comes to matter.” -- Julie Livingston, author of * Self-Devouring Growth: A Planetary Parable as Told from Southern Africa *
“Stefan Ecks shows us, yet again, why he is the leading theorist of globalizing minds and their pharmaceutical anodynes. In
Living Worth, he takes readers on a tour de force through case studies of depression and of global psychopharmaceuticals to show how the values of brains and feelings become enmeshed with the larger values that capitalism places on currencies and commodities. The result is an absolute work of genius, and a must-read for anyone concerned about how we think and feel and the social practices and economies through which our thoughts and feelings come to matter.” -- Jonathan M. Metzl, author of * Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America’s Heartland *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. Embodied Value Theory 11
2. Relative Value: Culture, Comparison, Commensurability 36
3. Never Enough: Markets in Life 57
4. Making a Difference: Corporate Social Responsibility 79
5. Pharmaceutical Citizenship, Marketing, and the Global Monoculture of Health 98
6. What Drugs Do in Different Spaces: Global Spread and Local Bubbles 117
7. Acting through Other (Prescribing) Habits 136
8. Culture, Context, and Consensus: Comparing Symptoms and Things 156
9. Generic: Distinguishing Good Similarity from Bad Similarity 175
10. Same Ills, Same Pills: Genealogies of Global Mental Health 194
11. Failed Biocommensurations: Psychiatric Crises after DSM-5 214
References 235
Index 269
