Pharmaceutical Reason: Knowledge and Value in Global Psychiatry (Cambridge Studies in Society and the Life Sciences)

"A brilliant account of the globalization of diagnoses of mental illnesses, brought about by the pharmaceutical industry and the genetic code. A French gene-hunting company pays a poor mental hospital in Buenos Aires to send blood samples from patients with bipolar disorder. But the doctors do not make that diagnosis there! Now they must: the hospital cannot afford not to. A truly thick description of the interface between two systems of thought, and its impact on patients and staff. This is the best sort of medical anthropology, both sensitive to real people, now, and pregnant with implications for the future." - Ian Hacking, College de France

"At once ethnographically detailed and theoretically incisive, Lakoff's book is an important watershed for studies of pharmaceutical culture. Provocatively and convincingly, he challenges the ascendancy of biological psychiatry in Europe and the US by tracing the different history of psychoanalysis and biological psychiatry in Argentina. This book will greatly reward anyone interested in the social context of psychotropic drugs, the comparative history of mental illness, or the cultural understandings that imbue contemporary concepts of mind and brain." - Emily Martin, New York University

"Pharmaceutical Reason sets a high standard for future work... Its close ethnographic reading...is exemplary." - Paul Brodwin, Anthropological Quarterly

"Pharmaceutical Reason is exemplary in its demonstration of the benefits conferred by cross-cultural research on the evaluation of 'universal' categories of understanding, and more pertinent here, the process by which this universality is asserted and either adopted or resisted." - Kalman Applbaum, American Journal of Sociology

"...a brilliant study combining scholarly historical analyses with a close monitoring of highly technical scientific controversies..." - Michel Callon, Contemporary Sociology

"Over the past 25 years, I have frequently called for more anthropological attention to the production and marketing of pharmaceuticals and their linkage to health and health care. Lakoff's ethnography is a convincing response to that call. From this book, I learned that there is even more anthropological...in the development and marketing of antipsychotic drugs than I had imagined." - Sjaak van der Geest, American Ethnologist

"One of the most exciting and beautifully written contributions to the study of psychiatry and pharmaceutical use in recent years, Lakoff's analysis may prove deeply influential for a range of disciplines, as he continues to develop the wider significance of his insights." - Science as Culture

Andrew Lakoff argues that a new 'pharmaceutical' way of thinking about and acting upon mental disorder is coming to reshape not only the field of psychiatry, but also our very notions of self. Drawing from a comprehensive ethnography of psychiatric practice in Argentina, Lakoff looks at new ways of understanding and intervening in human behaviour. Highlighting the social and political implications that these new forms of expertise about human behaviour and human thought bring, Lakoff presents an arresting case-study to appeal beyond psychiatry and the life sciences.