Overview
This book tackles the historical encounter between madness and space in two interwoven ways. Conceptually, it offers a critical revisiting of Foucault's famous 1961 text translated as Madness and Civilization. Empirically, it offers a sustained inquiry into the changing geography of the places and spaces associated with madness in England and Wales from Medieval times to the 1860s. It traces the emergence of an exclusionary impulse seeking to remove those designated as 'mad' from the midst of everyday society, and it also maps out the many different sites and institutions that have confined, sheltered, treated and even cured madness over the centuries. From the places of hermit-saints to the spaces of the public county lunatic asylum, attention is paid to the discourses and practices that have created a succession of muddled, overlain and often disputed 'landscapes of lunacy'. From the seclusion of the remotest countryside to the bustle of the most congested city, reference is made to the many different types of environment that have been the setting for receptacles receiving early mental patients. Readers can follow the broad historical sweep of the narrative, or they can dip into
Full Product Details
Author: Christopher Philo
Publisher: The Edwin Mellen Press Ltd
Imprint: Edwin Mellen Press Ltd
Edition: illustrated edition
ISBN: 9780773465091
ISBN 10: 077346509
Pages: 712
Publication Date: 01 July 2004
Audience:
General/trade
,
Professional and scholarly
,
General
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
"""[This] book represents a distinct departure by comparison with previous studies of the 'mad-business'. It seeks to take us through the entire anatomical network of public spaces and places reserved for insanity, to make us think concretely and, moreover, spatially about the whys and wherefores behind the many and various places and spaces designed and designated for the insane.....[It] will help to foster and to further a significant shift in the disciplinary focus of future thinking and research in this vibrant field of enquiry."" - Dr. Jonathan Andrews, Oxford; ""The empirical richness of the material is matched by the theoretical depth of the argument, and I am sure the work will be of interest not only to geographers who hold Chris Philo's work in the highest regard, but also to historians who have already responded enthusiastically to his conference papers and articles on the topic. This is certainly a big work, but it is also intellectually ambitious, and it will attract interest as much for its arguments as for the detailed treatment of data on which they depend."" - Professor Felix Driver, Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London; ""[Professor Philo] has made use of a wide range of sources to produce an important history of the development of institutional provision for the insane from medieval times until the end of the nineteenth-century.....In his study of the 18th and 19th centuries he reinterprets much previously written material, while supplementing it with much that he has gathered from his own researches. He provides very detailed and extensive footnotes, which historians (including myself) will find invaluable.....a very important reference work for historians and students of the social history of medicine, of psychiatry, and of institutions as a whole."" - Dr. Leonard D. Smith, Honorary Research Fellow, School of Medicine, University of Birmingham"""
[This] book represents a distinct departure by comparison with previous studies of the 'mad-business'. It seeks to take us through the entire anatomical network of public spaces and places reserved for insanity, to make us think concretely and, moreover, spatially about the whys and wherefores behind the many and various places and spaces designed and designated for the insane.....[It] will help to foster and to further a significant shift in the disciplinary focus of future thinking and research in this vibrant field of enquiry. - Dr. Jonathan Andrews, Oxford; The empirical richness of the material is matched by the theoretical depth of the argument, and I am sure the work will be of interest not only to geographers who hold Chris Philo's work in the highest regard, but also to historians who have already responded enthusiastically to his conference papers and articles on the topic. This is certainly a big work, but it is also intellectually ambitious, and it will attract interest as much for its arguments as for the detailed treatment of data on which they depend. - Professor Felix Driver, Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London; [Professor Philo] has made use of a wide range of sources to produce an important history of the development of institutional provision for the insane from medieval times until the end of the nineteenth-century.....In his study of the 18th and 19th centuries he reinterprets much previously written material, while supplementing it with much that he has gathered from his own researches. He provides very detailed and extensive footnotes, which historians (including myself) will find invaluable.....a very important reference work for historians and students of the social history of medicine, of psychiatry, and of institutions as a whole. - Dr. Leonard D. Smith, Honorary Research Fellow, School of Medicine, University of Birmingham
Author Information
Chris Philo has been Professor of Geography at the University of Glasgow since 1995. His major research is on the historical geography of madness and asylums, but he has also studied the 'post-asylum geographies' associated with deinstitutionalization.
